Crescent-Shaped Pendant with Confronted Birds

Gold Pendant

There is one Fatimid filigree-constructed object in the Museum's collection that, like the hoard material found in an earthenware jar in Tunesia[1], bears no granulation. Executed solely in filigree with a cloisonne inset, this pendant exhibits a number of other features found in the pieces from the Tunisian find, namely a boxlike construction, crescent shape, gold stringing loops (here made of fused coiled wire), openwork design with a strip support, S-curve filler elements, and paired twisted wires. The likelihood, therefore, is that this object must be closely contemporary with the objects found in the earthenware jar.

[Jenkins and Keene 1983]

Footnotes:

1. Mançais and Poinssot, L. Objets kairouanais IXe au XIIe siecle. Tunis, 1952, vol. 11, fasc. 2, pp. 467–93.

Biconical Bead (1980.456), Spherical Bead (1980.457) and Pendant (30.95.37)

Among the luxury arts that flourished under the Fatimid caliphs, gold jewelry stands out for its innovation and complexity. According to literary sources, prodigious amounts of such jewelry were manufactured for both royal and patrician patrons; most of these items were later melted down for currency or refashioned into newer pieces. Gold jewelry elements of the Fatimid period share several distinct characteristics, including box construction rings for stringing, filigree openwork with S-curve decoration, and, at least until the later period, granulation. The three pieces here—two beads and a pendant—demonstrate all these characteristics.

Both beads exemplify the distinctive Fatimid tradition of filigree openwork with granulation. The biconical bead (1980.456) is divided into five sections by strips decorated with granulation along the body, creating an allover design of scrolls and S-curves. A nearly identical bead is found in the Khalili Collection, London.[1] The spherical bead (no. 1980.457) is composed of two hemispheres of curling scrolls that form heart-shaped units. Two eleventh-century gold rings from Fatimid Egypt in the Khalili Collection bear the same scrolled-heart motif on the bezels, shanks, and sides; this motif can also be seen in a drawing of a woman in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, dating from the Fatimid period.[2]

Practically all the published Fatimid beads are independent, unattached to any larger piece of jewelry, but one exception shows how these beads might have been incorporated into a larger jewelry setting. A necklace in the collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority, part of a hoard excavated at Caesarea, consists of several beads, the most important of which are one biconical and two spherical beads that form the centerpiece of the necklace. All three are constructed of openwork filigree and decorated with granulation.[3] Because the necklace had been preserved in a vessel with other objects, it remained intact and presumably in its original form.

The pendant (no. 30.95.37) employs the typical Fatimid box construction and filigree technique, using straight and twisted gold wire. The points of the crescent terminate in a turquoise bead, and several loops around its perimeter suggest that a string of gems originally embellished the border. At the center, a pair of confronted birds is depicted in polychrome cloisonné enamel, a technique more closely associated with Byzantine production in Constantinople than with the eastern Mediterranean during the Fatimid period. However, enamel work (known in the medieval Arabic literature as mina) clearly had appeal in Fatimid Egypt as well. One eleventh-century source mentions a gift from a Byzantine king to the Fatimid court that included five bracelets and three saddles, all encrusted with polychrome enamel.[4] Another source includes jewelry with enameled elements in trousseau lists.[5] The cloisonne enamel inserts on this pendant may have been purchased ready-made, perhaps imported from the Byzantine world, and then incorporated into the locally made gold setting, a theory supported by the construction of the setting and the apparent use of adhesive to fix the enameled plaque in place.[6] A similar polychrome-enameled crescent medallion, which was excavated at Fustat, is in the collection of the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo. It, too, bears a confronted-bird motif.[7]

Ellen Kelley and Karin Zonis in [Ekhtiar, Soucek, Canby, and Haidar 2011]

Footnotes:

1. Another biconical bead is in the collection of the L. A. Mayer Institute for Islamic Art, Jerusalem, but it is not openwork. Rather, it is made of a flat sheet in the form of two attached cones, with decoration in wire filigree possibly covered by granulation (Early Islamic Jewellery. Exhibition, L.A. Mayer Memorial Institute for Islamic Art, Jerusalem. Catalogue by Rachel Hasson. Jerusalem, 1987, p. 89, no. 119). The National Museum of Damascus has a necklace composed of gold beads, both spherical and biconical, along with pearls and other round beads (see Amsterdam 1999–2000, Earthly Beauty, Heavenly Art: Art of Islam. Exhibition, De Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam. Catalogue by Mikhail B. Piotrovsky, John Vrieze, and others. Amsterdam, 1999, p. 272, no. 266).

2. Amsterdam 1999–2000, p. 268, nos. 257, 258.(see footnote 1) For the drawing, see Rosen-Ayalon, Myriam. "The Islamic Jewellery from Ashkelon." In Jewellery and Goldsmithing in the Islamic World: International Symposium, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem 1987, edited by Na‘ama Brosh, pp. 9–19. [Jerusalem], 1991, p. 15.

3. Weyl, Martin, et al. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. London, 1995, p. 90.

4. al-Qaddumi, Ghada al-Hijjawi, ed. and trans. Book of Gifts and Rarities (Kitab al-Hadaya wa al-Tuhaf): Selections Compiled in the Fifteenth Century from an Eleventh-Century Manuscript on Gifts and Treasures. Cambridge, Mass., 1996, pp. 113 – 14, and see also note on p. 302 explaining the translation of the term dusut as "bracelet" rather than "chest" (cf. [al-]Qaddumi, Ghada al-Hijjawi. "A Medieval Islamic Book of Gifts and Treasures: Translation, Annotation, and Commentary on the ‘Kitab al-Hadaya wa al-Tuhaf.’" Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1990, p. 90, cited in an essay on this pendant by Marilyn Jenkins in Evans and Wixom 1997.

5. Goitein, S[olomon] D. A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza. Vol. 4, Daily Life. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983, pp. 150-226.

6. Evans and Wixom 1997, p. 421. Other enameled pieces of the period bearing inscriptions correctly rendered in Arabic suggest that Fatimid jewelers eventually adopted this technique; see Gonzalez, Valerie. "Pratique d’une technique d’art Byzantine chez les Fatimides: L’emaillerie sur metal." In L’Égypte fatimide, son art et son histoire: Actes du colloque organizé à Paris les 28, 29 et 30 mai 1998, edited by Marianne Barrucand, pp. 197–217, pl. 10. Paris, 1999.

7. O’Kane 2006, p. 61.

Pendant

"[Khatir al-Mulk] had told me at an earlier date that the Byzantine King Michael had offered to the Lady, the mother of al-Imam al-Mustansir bi-Allah [Fatimid caliph, r. 1035–95], five chests [dast] of jewelry enameled [mujra bi-zujaj] with glass in five colors: deep red, snow white, jet black, sky blue, deep azure. It was fashioned in the best goldsmiths' work [siyaghah]. Its decoration [naqsh] was inlaid with finest craftmanship".[1]

This eleventh-century source documents that these enameled jewelry items were sent as gifts from Byzantium to a Muslim ruler along with an enameled gold Rumi girdle and one hundred gold vessels inlaid with enamel.[2] The author is silent, however, regarding enameled jewelry or any other enameled objects moving in the opposite direction.

Additional contemporary information about enameled objects is provided by the trousseau lists among the Cairo Geniza documents, which mention enameled bracelets, pins, and elements that form a tiara. S. D. Goitein has suggested that because enamel (minai) is never specifically described in this repository, the goldsmiths in Egypt did not themselves make the enamel but bought it ready-made in the suq.[3]

These facts, together with the paucity of enamel work attributable to the Muslim world before the Late Islamic period and the abundance of enameled jewelry and other gold objects from the Byzantine world, lead one to wonder whether the cloisonné-enamel plaques on Fatimid gold jewelry were made in Muslim lands or imported into Syria or Egypt for use in the manufacture of this jewelry. The present work and a pair of earrings with enameled insets in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (no. 1979.278.1a, b) appear to support the latter thesis.

The pendant incorporates in its goldwork the basic vocabulary that dominated jewelry production in the Fatimid domains into the second half of the eleventh century and perhaps later, except that rather than using granulation to highlight the filigree decoration, the goldsmith inset a plaque of cloisonné enamel as embellishment. The translucent green and opaque white and red enamels appear to have compositions consistent with what is known of Islamic glassmaking and glazing technique of the period.[4]

The craftman who made the pendant did not use the setting he designed to secure the plaque. Instead of placing the plaque against the back of the enframing twisted wires and then securing it with a filigreed back, he constructed the entire ornament minus the enamel. The only way an enamel plaque could then be incorporated was to add one that was smaller than the opening. And the only way it could be secured was by means of an adhesive.[5]

Why would a jeweler capable of producing a filigree object of this quality not plan ahead? Perhaps because he did not execute the enamel work himself but instead bought it in the suq and set it into an already finished pendant, a scenario Goitain felt was implied in the Geniza documents. Two other pendants in the Metropolitan Museum, each with a similar overhanging frame for the enamel plaque, support such a theory. One (1974.22), composed of fine filigree work highlighted with granulation, has lost its cloisonné-enamel plaque, the second (1970.76), of even finer filigree and granulation work, is now set with a piece of glass where the enamel would originally have been. If each plaque had been sized and properly set as an integral part of the pendant, it could not have become dislodged unless the entire ornament was taken apart or broken. The fact that the pendant now set with glass has remained intact fully supports this theory.

[Evans and Wixom 1997]

Footnotes:

1. Ghada Hijjawi Qaddumi. "A Medieval Islamic Book of Gifts and Treasures: Translation, Annotation, and Commentary of the 'Kitab al-Hadaya wa al-Tuhaf.'" Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., 1990, para. 97. p. 90.

2. Ibid., paras. 62, 82, pp. 62–63, 83–84.

3. S. D. Goitein. A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza. Vol. 1, Economic Foundations. Vol. 4, Daily Life. Berkeley, Cal., 1967–83, vol. 4, p. 208.

4. This information was provided by Mark T. Wypyski of the Department of Objects Conservation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, after he had done surface analyses on the enamel plaques using energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDS). Mr. Wypyski states that such Islamic-type enamels were not used exclusively on objects manufactured in the Muslim world but have been found on Byzantine as well as medieval Limoges enameled objects.

5. This information and that on Metropolian Museum of Art 1974.22 and 1970.76 (discussed in the present entry) was provided by Pete Dandridge of the Department of Objects Conservation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. To date, no Fatimid jewelry object with a cloisonné-enamel plaque has been found that utilizes the setting designed to secure it.


Gold Pendant with a Cloisonné inset

The decoration of the Fatimid period is distinguished by an expanded figural repertory, as well as by excellent craftsmanship. This pendant exemplifies both of these aspects: its filigree goldwork is exceptionally delicate and its central motif is formed by two facing birds executed in polychrome enamel. Originally it would also have been framed by strands of pearls, or small precious and semiprecious stones, that would have been threaded through the loops around the edge. The large turquoise at the bottom would then have acted as the culminating point of this border of gems. Both the crescent shape of the ornament and the technique of cloisonné enamel were most likely taken from Byzantine art. Cloisonné, the most difficult process for making enamels, involves thin gold wires that are soldered to a gold ground to create compartments (cloisons) ready to receive the enamel. The enamel itself is made of variously colored glass that is ground to a powder and then applied wet as a paste onto the gold surface. Subsequently, the piece is fired until its enamels fuse. The decoration that is in filigree is fashioned from straight and braided gold wires forming a box-like construction. This produces the desired geometric design in openwork which, in turn, rests on a network of strip supports.

Annie Christine Daskalakis-Matthews in [Walker et al. 1994]

Theodore M. Davis, New York (by 1913–d. 1915; bequeathed to MMA)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Islamic Jewelry in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," April 22–August 14, 1983, no. 47.

Mexico City. Colegio de San Ildefonso. "Arte Islámico del Museo Metropolitano de Arte de Nueva York," September 30, 1994–January 8, 1995, no. 100.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Glory of Byzantium," March 11–July 6, 1997, no. 278.

Paris. Institut du Monde Arabe. "Tresors Fatimides du Caire," April 28, 1998–August 30, 1998, no. 76.

Ross, Marvin Chauncey. "An Egypto-Arabic Cloisonné Enamel." Ars Islamica vol. VII, pt. 2 (1940). pp. 165–67, ill. fig. 1.

Ettinghausen, Richard, Hugo Buchthal, Otto Kurz, Marvin Chauncey Ross, Basil Gray, George C. Miles, Nabih A. Faris, and Carl Johan Lamm. "in: Ars Islamica." Six Thousand Years of Persian Art; The Exhibition of Iranian Art, New York, 1940, part 2, vol. VII (1940). pp. 165–167, ill. (b/w).

Dimand, Maurice S. A Handbook of Muhammadan Art. 2nd rev. and enl. ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1944. p. 148, ill. fig. 88 (b/w).

Ettinghausen, Richard. "Islamic Art." MMA Bulletin vol. 33, no. 1 (Spring 1975). p. 8, ill. (color).

Jenkins-Madina, Marilyn, and Manuel Keene. Islamic Jewelry in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1983. no. 47, pp. 80–81, ill. (color).

Allan, James, and Ludvik Kalus. Islamic Jewellery, edited by Michael Spink. London, England: Spink & Son Ltd., 1986. p. 32.

Jenkins-Madina, Marilyn. "Fatimid Jewelry, Its Subtypes and Influences." Ars Orientalis vol. 18 (1988). pp. 40, 45, ill. figs. 51, 5b.

Metropolitan Jewelry. 1991. p. 29, ill. (color).

de Montebello, Philippe, and Kathleen Howard, ed. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide. 6th ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1992. p. 314, ill. fig. 7 (color).

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Daniel S. Walker, Arturo Ponce Guadián, Sussan Babaie, Stefano Carboni, Aimee Froom, Marie Lukens Swietochowski, Tomoko Masuya, Annie Christine Daskalakis-Matthews, Abdallah Kahli, and Rochelle Kessler. "Colegio de San Ildefonso, Septiembre de 1994–Enero de 1995." In Arte Islámico del Museo Metropolitano de Arte de Nueva York. Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1994. no. 100, pp. 244–45, ill. (b/w).

Evans, Helen, and William D. Wixom, ed. "Art and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era A.D. 843–1261." In The Glory of Byzantium. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997. no. 278, pp. 420–21, ill. (color).

"Exposition Présentée à l'Institut du Monde Arabe du 28 Avril au 30 Aout 1998." In Trésors Fatimides du Caire. Paris: Institut du Monde Arabe, 1998. no. 76, p. 135, ill. (color).

Seipel, Wilfried. "Islamische Kunst zur Fatimidenzeit." In Schatze der Kalifen. Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 1999. no. 92, pp. 125–26, ill. (color).

Bloom, Jonathan M. "Islamic Art and Architecture in Fatimid North Africa and Egypt." In Arts of the City Victorious. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007. p. 100, ill. fig. 71 (color).

Carboni, Stefano. "The Arts of the Fatimid Period at the Metropolitan Museum of Art." The Ismaili (2008). p. 10, ill. fig. 16 (color).

Ekhtiar, Maryam, Priscilla P. Soucek, Sheila R. Canby, and Navina Haidar, ed. Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1st ed. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011. no. 101, pp. 151–52, ill. (color).

The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012. p. 128, ill. (color).

Caro, Federico, Deborah Schorsch, Louisa Smieska, and Brunella Santarelli. "Non-invasive XRF analysis of ancient Egyptian and near Eastern turquoise." Journal of Achaeological Science Reports 36 (2021). pp. 2, 6, 8, 11, ill. p. 8, fig. 2.