This head ornament would attach at the top of the head, and the flower and bell-shaped ornaments known as karnaphul jhumka would hang along the side of the ear. The karnaphul, or floral stud, is a typical shape for an ear ornament, referencing the natural world so favored in Indian jeweled arts. The hanging bell-shaped jhumka pendants would move gracefully as the wearer walked, moved, and danced.
This ornament was formerly in the collection of American artist and designer Lockwood de Forest (1850–1932) who purchased many items while traveling in India between 1879–1881. He collected many different examples of jewelry from India, including several of the same type. Today, his assemblage in the Met serves as a near-comprehensive study collection of Indian jewelry from the late nineteenth century.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Head Ornament
Date:19th century
Geography:Attributed to India, Kashmir, Punjab, or Rajasthan
Medium:Gold, glass, turquoise
Dimensions:Ht. 7 7/8 in. (20 cm) W. 10 5/8 in. (27 cm) D. 1 9/16 in. (4 cm)
Classification:Jewelry
Credit Line:John Stewart Kennedy Fund, 1915
Accession Number:15.95.105
Gold Head Ornament
On this gold head ornament workmanship of unusually high quality is evident in the granulation, a technique inherited from ancient and medieval times. The detail shows a feature uncommon to work of this kind. Granulation, however complex its pattern, is almost invariably arranged on one plane; in this example, however, each group of four grains, which together constitute the precisely controlled pattern on the band around the bottom of the hemispherical element, has an additional grain stacked on its top.
The profusion of small spherical drops also bespeaks a high level of technical proficiency in dapping. Such head ornaments are hooked at the top of the head; the bands frame the face, and the rosettes are fixed so that the hemispherical pendants hang near the ears.
The similarity in handling is striking between these hemispherical elements and elements excavated at Taxila that date to the first and second centuries A.D.[1]
[Jenkins and Keene 1983]
Footnotes:
1. "Excavations at Taxila." Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India, 1912–13. Calcutta, 1916, no. 5, pl. XXIb; The Art of India and Pakistan, exhibition catalogue. Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1947–48, pl. 22, fig. 185.
Head Ornament
Head ornaments such as this one are widespread in India and indeed in the whole of the Near East. The two bands descend from the top of the head to frame the face and attach near the ears.
Typically Indian features of this piece include: the profusion of skillfully made lac-filled hollow spheres; the star-shaped rosette form with its concentric rings of small, closely set stones; the settings themselves, in which natural and colored foils are placed underneath the stones and the gold pushed down around them; and the hemispherical pendant elements, with their rows of small hollow spheres suspended from openwork, granulated festoons. Parallels with this last characteristic can be found in jewelry from Taxila dating from the first to second century A.D. The difficult, age-old decorative technique of granulation, in which tiny spheroids of gold are colloid hard-soldered to a surface (as well as, usually to each other), is brilliantly represented by this piece. Since in this colloid hard-soldering ("colloid" because the alloying and thus solder-making element, invariably copper, is applied to a chemically divided state), the whole piece is brought to a temperature dangerously near the melting point of the gold, the firing of such work must be done with the most expert control. The master who made these hemispherical pendant elements has displayed great skill in creating a geometric configuration difficult and rare for granulation work; and the surmounting of each four-grain unit with another grain not only added to the dificulties of emplacement, but also increased the chances of melting or at least overfiring the piece, in which case the puddling of metal between the grains would have spoiled the crisp effect of the piece.
Manuel Keene in [Berlin 1981]
Lockwood de Forest (American), New York (until 1915; sold to MMA)
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Islamic Jewelry in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," April 22–August 14, 1983, no. 64.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Jewelry: The Body Transformed," November 12, 2018–February 24, 2019.
"Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art New York." In The Arts of Islam. Berlin, 1981. no. 138, pp. 320–21, ill. p. 321 (b/w).
Jenkins-Madina, Marilyn, and Manuel Keene. Islamic Jewelry in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1983. no. 64, p. 121, ill. (b/w).
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