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.

Indonesian brass adornment

This very old piece looks anthropomorphic standing up but it also looks strongly like a bull's head when looked at near head on. A trans formative and magical piece.
Read more…
E-mail me when people leave their comments –

Comments

  •  taigandja from sulawesi 

     nice old one around 16   17th century 

  • I had not seen this at all until now (have been otherwise occupied), but that is a wonderful piece, James, and it is as always great to have PIerre's comment. Susan Rodgers shows one on p. 141 of *Power and Gold* which I would guess is quite a bit later than yours. She describes the type, and the various ways in which it is interpreted, on pp. 325-6. It is more elaborate than yours (but less potent and suggestive, I feel). Similarly with an example illustrated by Anne Richter in *The Jewelery of Southeast Asia*, p. 31, which Richter describes as an evocation of the female genitalia [as is the case with the mamuli, of which you have several examples], "accompanied by symbols of status and fertility such as horns, shooting plants and rice grains". The type is in any case not infrequent per se, but I entirely agree with Pierre (as so often ..): yours is a very nice old one, no doubt, as he suggests, 16th or 17th c. It is stark in its architecture, and gains the more power from that fact.

  • Here is a link to another one (sold) posted on Thomas Murray's website: http://www.tmurrayarts.com/gallery-top/gallery/jewelry/tiganja/

This reply was deleted.

You need to be a member of Adorned Histories to add comments!

Join Adorned Histories

Request your copy of our newsletter.

If you would like to receive our newsletter

Click here