Boy's or Girl's Cap

Boy's or Girl's Cap

Solid silver caps like this one, and MMA nos. 2006.544.7, .4 and 2005.443.4 worn by both boys and girls, are known from a number of nineteenth-century sources. An 1886 article in The Journal of Indian Art featured an illustration of a similar piece described as a girl’s cap or helmet. The cap was composed of small silver plaques with stamped floral decoration surmounted by an aigrette and a feather; according to the source, the silver facets were sewn onto a red silk or wool foundation.[2]

In the cap here, the plaques are somewhat larger than those in the cap described above and are soldered together, and the stamped decoration is of stylized rams’ heads. Instead of a feather on top there is a carnelian, suggesting this headgear was worn by a boy, since feathers indicated a girl’s availability for marriage.[3] Turkmen embroidered cloth caps, when worn with the accompanying young girl’s silver
ornament (qubba) and other headdress ornaments, appear markedly similar to the solid silver cap.[4]

This cap may have been made somewhat later than the examples published in the late nineteenth-century literature: the perforated terminals are probably a twentieth-century feature,[5] and gilded sheet-silver plaques with stamped patterns are commonly found on Yomut collar disks dated to the early to mid-twentieth century.

Whereas in most such examples carnelians are used lavishly to form designs, a single stone sufficed here. The main aesthetic effect of this cap is achieved by the gilding, which creates a look of martial splendor.

Layla S. Diba in [Diba 2011]

Footnotes:

2. “Turkoman Ornaments.” Journal of Indian Art 1, no. 7 (October 1886), p. 53.

3. Dupaigne, Bernard. “Le grand art décoratif des Turkmènes.” Objets et mondes 18, nos. 1–2 (Spring–Summer 1978), p. 19.

4. Kalter, Johannes. The Arts and Crafts of Turkestan. New York, 1983, p. 94, fig. 76, and p. 95, fig. 77.

5. Untracht, Oppi. Jewelry Concepts and Technology. Garden City, N.Y., 1982, p. 81.

Marshall and Marilyn R. Wolf, Toronto, Canada (by 2006–13; gifted to MMA)

Diba, Layla S. "Silver Ornaments from the Marshall and Marilyn R. Wolf Collection." In Turkmen Jewelry. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011. no. 1, p. 48, ill.