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Comments

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  Johanne June 2, 2011 at 2:57pm

  Lovely piece Howah,!  Is it the whole  crown or the front part of it?
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  howah June 2, 2011 at 6:42pm

  hi, this is the whole crown actually. i am indeed quite happy with this crown. have only seen one other and that was featured in an ethnic jewelry book. that is also where i got the background information from about this crown.

   
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  Joost Daalder June 3, 2011 at 4:10am

  Hi Howah, - I think this is very nice indeed. Seems a good purchase. As to the metal used, on the photo as I see it there is to my mind a chance that this is a silver alloy. Have you tried polishing it with a normal silver cloth (not liquids - a silver cloth only. Don't touch the tassels - too risky, but rub the panels. They should come up with a soft but radiant glow: how soft and radiant depends on the allow. NOW: THE IMPORTANT THING IS THAT WITH SILVER THAT GLOW WOULD "STAY", AND ONLY SLOWLY *TARNISH* (NOT SIMPLY GO FLAT AGAIN. BUT, IF THE PIECE IS *not* SILVER, THEN IT WILL SOON GO FLAT AGAIN, OR, ALTERNATIVELY, THE SHEEN WILL ACTUALLY BE QUITE SHARP AND STAY SHARP, BUT (A) LACK THE SOFTNESS OF THE SILVER, AND (B) NOT SLOWLY TARNISH. Even if the piece does contain silver, the content varies greatly according to the alloy. But even 30% or so would help greatly, and is worth rubbing a piece for. There is nothing to be said for not polishing silver, for it will severely tarnish otherwise, and ultimately disintegrate. Also, there is nothing very appealing about a dull dark-grey metal - in that sense the patina of neglect that would build up is not worth having. Major museums, like the BM, polish their silver objects, even if thousands of years old.

  This looks in pretty good nick to me!
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  howah June 4, 2011 at 11:26pm

  Hi Joost,

   

  I polished the crown with a silver cloth before taking the photo and it did do good for the overall tone of the metal evident by the end result. Having said that, the piece wasn't very discolored when I got it and the seller mentioned that the piece didn't tarnish while it was in his posession. Considering it being worn on the head on such an important day, this piece should have a little silver content in it, although definitely not very high. perhaps one day I can have it tested to be sure.
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  Joost Daalder June 5, 2011 at 2:17am

  Hi Howah, - That is all very interesting! If there was and is little tarnish that does indeed make it harder to know just what you've got, though a test would soon reveal it (within limits, by the way - but that is a different story). However, if there is silver, and if you leave it in the open air, it will, at some point, tarnish, so you would certainly discover that over time. Strangely, and I have NEVER come across a good explanation, some objects, even if left in the same environment, and all, say, sterling as marked, so with the same amount of silver, will nevertheless behave differently. Some need polishing after a fairly short period - say 2-3 months - because they are quite tarnished, while others tarnish only very slowly. But in the end any silver-alloy object will tarnish, even one that has only 30% silver, as the silver itself will tarnish, even if the other metals don't. So ... you will see! To me it does seem as though there is silver in it, as it looks fairly "soft", and - as you say - a piece used for an important purpose would be the more likely to be part-silver. And anyway ... it is a very nice object!
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  Harald January 26, 2012 at 10:37pm

  Beautiful! 

  Oppi Untracht says about this type of crown: Himachal Pradesh and Punjab, worn during wedding ceremony by the groom. But you may have read that.
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  Harald February 11, 2012 at 7:13pm

  You could with a piece like this go the Gouda to the Assay office and have it tested. It is very near the station. The costs for one test are not so great in the time of the gulden it was f12,50 for one piece.
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  Johanne February 11, 2012 at 8:29pm

  I recently bought a small bottle of silvertest (toetswater zilver, zie: Google) for about €9,00. I tested a lot of items I was not sure about.. and sometimes with surprising outcome.

   By the way I bought Four Centuries of Silver by Margaret Duda, a valuable book! Lot of information and pictures. Thanks for the advice to buy it!
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  Joost Daalder February 11, 2012 at 9:48pm

  The whole question of silver testing is a very interesting one. I would agree that nitric acid still remains very good, but the Assay Office in Gouda to which Harald refers uses a method described by Rene van der Star in *The Art of Silver Jewellery* which appears to be yet more revealing. Van der Star had all the pieces for this book tested there, and the results looked quite interesting. But it is a different matter how much it, or the nitric acid test, ultimately tells us about the total composition of a piece. Thus, van der Star shows several Miao pieces which would according to his Gouda expert consist of 98% silver. What is not discussed, is to what extent the method cuts right through the substance of the piece as a whole. I feel 90% or more certain that it does not. Several of the large torques shown are, I know from sources acquainted with Miao workmanship and from my own experience as a collector, covered with a very thick layer of almost pure silver, but are not solid silver all the way through. Not that this makes them worthless, of course. If we stop to think, it would rarely have been possible, economically, for these people to afford very heavy pieces (sometimes weighing some kilograms) of pure silver, leave alone the very large number of pieces in existence. But van der Star's procedure suggests - at least tacitly - otherwise. I do feel that I am referring to a real problem, and I would not dare to pronounce that my own pieces, however thick and good the silver may appear to be, necessarily consist of silver throughout. Of course, we have probably all seen many modern pieces which very OBVIOUSLY are just THINLY plated, as one can see from the base metal revealed at the worn/rubbed edges. I'd be very grateful to hear what others think about this matter. Linda Pastorino once had a Miao piece cut through by her jeweller to see what was inside, so to speak, and it turned out that the piece consisted essentially of a copper construction with a thick layer of silver on top - pleasingly thick, for sure, but it was a layer, all the same. And that is surely what one would expect with pieces which are extremely heavy ... not least in China, where all sorts of different methods seem to occur. I do not imply that ALL heavy pieces, in China or elsewhere, are constructed this way. I just draw attention to what I think is a problem not touched on in the van der Star book. I don't wish to suggest either that the thickly plated pieces should not be bought - just that it may be idealistic to think that they consist of 98% silver only.
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  howah February 12, 2012 at 1:19am

  I've been telling myself to buy the silver testing liquid for months, but still haven't done so. I'm pretty sure this headdress has silver in it though. There is some tarnishing visible now on the main panels. I have some other pieces in my collection that I would like to have tested. For me personally, I would be quite content when just the outer layer of the piece is made of (good) silver when I buy something that is sold to me as silver.