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.
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This is more in tune with the more "normal" Tumarr style: the others have abnormally large boxes. Depending on the size, this looks in principle as though it was certainly made for the human body.
This is extremely large. Meaning tumar size across is about 28 " or so. I saw this in person. I also had a Turkoman piece like this at a show as big. So this was based on that style and is not at all Uzbek in design. The surface treatment is also not consistant with Uzbek texture either.
Below we see another outlandish piece, also something I have had, and this is a combination of several styles. Turkoman in shape and design, Khiva in openwork wire decoration backed by silvered foil as well as bump surface decoration. This was massive also at about 24 " across. So since this has three styles of work including some Russian tea pots on top,, who was this for? As I said, I think these were late 19th and early 20th c fantasies bling pieces of the rich idle Central Asians of some ethnic group?
It is difficult to attach the right comments to the right photos. Below this photo is a comment of mine WHICH DOES NOT REFER TO THIS PHOTO!! So ignore that in relation to this image (below). I have only just found this, and find it very interesting, but I think this is something very different. Speculatively, I would say this was not ordered by the Emir. Although he had a florid and opulent taste, and showed that in his own person, too, this has, if you don't mind my saying so, a "nouveau riche" element - a hint of vulgarity - which makes this "bourgeois", not "aristocratic". I feel sure, intuitively at least, that this does not fit the Emir's taste and was made for another - wealthy but not classy - client. I also agree that, although at times Uzbeki workers did go over the top, there are too many differences in style to make it likely that this is Uzbeki. Personally I would not want it: it is clever and well executed, but to my mind lacks style and civilisation. I think it does not belong to the group of articles we have been discussing. A cocktail of styles, as you say - disagreeable, in my view, and I think the smith producing this was working for a client who had no real taste but wanted anything extravagant. Hence he got a potpourri, not a unified artefact.
I have sold many smalle pieces also with a combination of technique. The point is that I believe that there were various jewelers of different regions working in workshops producing pieces for differing rich clients. I agree this lacks the sophistication of a piece for the Emir however my point in showing this is that it has four regional styles in one piece and there for is not only a confused design but also by seeing this, one can imagine that differing cultures were making and ordering these pieces. There is no real Uzbek style on these and I have had many that are smaller but with combined style like this.
BELOW is the piece which I think we are discussing right now, right?? The one with a mixture of styles and which I see as "bourgeois"? Oh yes, it is interesting allright, and this demonstrates indeed that not all such large and ambitious pieces were made for the Emir. I would add, though, that from what I have seen ALL the other pieces are pieces that I think of as pieces he would find desirable, whereas I feel fairly sure he would have most likely rejected this one as not suiting his taste! So far this is the ONLY one where I feel that it is truly unlikely that he would have commissioned or chosen it. I suppose that although undoubtedly one must admit the possibility of more than one person buying, it is remarkable how many of these pieces seem to appeal to one and the same kind of sensibility. No doubt you are quite right about there being a considerable variety of makers and possibly even buyers - but this is so much inferior in TASTE (not technique) that I would venture to guess that the Emir was in general the LEADING buyer, and that many of the very refined pieces - which most of the ones you and I have looked at together are - could quite convincingly have been made for his court. With this I almost feel it is not a Bukharan buyer, even, that we are necessarily looking at. To put it crudely: today one would make this for a wealthy American (for example from Texas) who has a lot of money but no aesthetic understanding. It's a hodgepodge and it is much too loud, comparatively speaking. If I were given it I'd quickly try to sell it and buy something else, that is how little I like it, in comparison with the far more unified, coherent and refined pieces that we have in general been considering. I must admit to having a kind of allergy to the teapots, too!