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 great!
This one looks really old, fantastic!
I wore this all the time but was in my "repair shop" for the last two years. I had to reconnect the lower strand of beads, the cord broke. I have not done it until last night. I can finally wear it again!
Good you repaired it shame to keep it hidden!!
I think I got this in Ladakh in the early 80's on my second trip. Again things were expensive there then and when I went in the early years my whole spending might have been only 1,000 dollars to last a month including lodging and food! A piece like this was then maybe 300 which was alot of my budget, however looking back, if I was in a position to buy everything I saw that was good, I would really have quite a value now. When I started to make the money, then the things were not available. I sold two of these both from private collections and not from source.
I have alot in the repair bay of my own to work on. The for sale stuff I do first. The private stuff sits.
When one uses things it happens sometimes. It is the reason that I try and be very careful so don't break things. I switch off and in some cases use very seldom like one piece in repair now that has very delicate woven small coral beads as the fringe.
As you may remember, LInda, we have a very similar one, which you thought was the same age as this one, illustrated on p. 301 of *Ethnic Jewellery and Adornment*, which Truus and I independently dated early 20th c. I am inclined to agree with you on the date of the two pieces, therefore, but I do think you may be too categorical in seeing a sharp division between the cloth here and that which you take to be used in the 80s (with a more "produced" look, in your view). I don't know that I think this cloth any less "produced" looking. And your theory leaves a very large period in between, which is puzzling, and which you do not seem to be able to account for (a period of 60 or more years). Also, I am not at all sure that I find this cloth necessarily less "produced" looking than the ones you impute to the 80s. What I DO feel sure of is that more recently a number have appeared which DEFINITELY, even if they use old cloth, are quite "manufactured", as they have far too much recent stuff on them (unlikely to be mere replacement) - notably very recent turquoises and other very shiny and smooth pieces which show no age at all. But, although I do not doubt that there may have been several pieces made "anew", using old materials, in the 80s, I do not think you can so very categorically attribute this (or our similar piece) to the 20s or before and the others to the 80s, with NOTHING in between. Too often, the pieces (not least the cloths) are virtually undistinguishable, and I do find myself wondering how many may have been made BETWEEN the 20s and the 80s. That is surely a legitimate question. It would be very strange if there was NO production during those years. I do agree, however, that this particular type is uncommon - and we did get ours from a good source, the original owner having acquired it during the 60s or early 70s, so presumably before what you see as the beginning of the "faking/forging" period, and as he bought it during that time it MAY already have been some decades old. But I see a smoother transition than you. Many peraks have been made, over the time we are talking about, which kept recycling old materials. Should we see them all as "produced" or even fake?? Within the culture, they may well all have seemed bona fide. Peraks which use modern materials ONLY are in fact very recent. I would concede, though, that during the 80s some pieces appeared, usually with excellent old materials, which had shapes that one does not seem to find in older books. But as they are so good, and use such excellent materials, to which extent can one see them as somehow spurious? There must be some difficult to make distinctions between some of these pieces. And in particular I am disturbed by the leap which you make from the 19th/20th c early pieces to those in the 80s.
Hi
as I said that the cloth was not the problem with the pieces. In the first ones that appeared the cloth was all used. There was plenty of it around from robes and other materials. They would use all old things and sew them on, same with the older style fake peryaks. Yours is not a fake one anyway. Yours is real. The fake ones are a bit different. The ones after yours are the next generation. What makes mine and some of the slightly older ones different is that there is a randomness to the pattern that is more original and made for the use as apposed to when they started getting more productive in the ways they put them together. When finally they started producing them for tourists they became even more ridgid. There is one a bit more similar to mine in the India book by Oppi that Colette owns. They are all a bit different but the manufacture of hers is about what mine is like. The steel beads on mine placed like that as well as her's with small coral beads and the twists on hers on the bottom done in various designs was done on earlier pieces. The more ridgid and then also less random were later variants then when they started making them for sale, they were obvious to us as we saw alot on the market and they looked prefab and not authentic even though materials were still old.
Hi Linda, if you have the time can you comment on mine as it is a newly made one I guess but I think still with nice coral and turquoise beads?? It is in my picture gallery. Thanks alot!