A digital archive showcasing the extensive collection of jewellery and adornment images shared on the former Ethnic Jewels Ning site over the years. These images have significantly enriched discussions on cultural adornment and its global dispersion.
You need to be a member of Adorned Histories to add comments!
Request your copy of our newsletter.
If you would like to receive our newsletter
Comments
I don`t remember but assume that all these are used in N. African jewellery.
Does anyone know in what context lot 365 would have been used? Has anyone seen old facetted amber of this type used?
Thanks, S. I`d love to see them. I guess many of us bewail our actions which have caused "loss" of such treasures.
I ask because it looks it looks like what is often called ancient or Roman amber, of which a little is on its` way to me right now. I`ll show it when it arrives.
I believe it is not unknown for Roman amber to show up in N. Africa - for good reason. It would have travelled the Roman amber route down from Russia, the Baltic coast and Germany`s East Sea.As well as wearing it on their armoury to dazzle the enemy in battle, the Romans considered it to be a powerful healing vector.
Interestingly to me, I have just discovered that its` use as such is still current in Bulgaria where friends rub such beads on one another for the health which is suppose to come from the resultant dust. There it is termed medical amber. Teething necklaces in similar vein will be familiar to us. Though I think the modern medical profession pooh-poohs the notion of its` efficacy..
Mine is coming from Sofia having formerly been the property of the wife of a prominent Soviet party official. It was "collected", I am told, in Kaliningrad in 1940. I wonder if that makes it ethnic.
( It used to be common for Kaliningrad amber, due to former poor security, to be collected at the sewage outlets to the mine which is on the coast to the south west of the city. Or Konigsberg as it was then. Hope mine wasn`t!).