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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Wow very nice, starting to learn and appreciate Chinese jewelry more and more.
thanks Marie-Ange, please have a look at my other photo to see how it's worn.
Amazing, now you can see how large this piece actualy is, beautiful!
Yes, it's very long and has considerable weight. you don't see such pieces that often for sale, so I was lucky. I found it in China's South-West in the minority areas. there was a lot of new junk in the shop and when I spotted this piece and wanted to see it up-close, the owner immediately asked me how I knew this was an old and good piece. I will post a close up of the beads tomorrow, they have nice etched designs.
Yes too bad they choose to make alot of new cheap looking copies now in China but I guess price is very important as most people could not afford nice authentic old jewelry.
Hi howah and others: We too have a good old one - almost identical to this one - which however we also found hard to get. We got it just a little too late to include it in *Ethnic Jewellery and Adornment*, as we certainly would have done if we could have ... You are right, they are not at all common. Actually, in this particular instance I don't think I have seen a reproduction, though I would think they must exist. A similar example occurs in one of our Chinese books on the SW minorities, but I cannot immediately recall which one, and none of the other books we own feature it. We do like the piece very much, and for that matter fully share your and Marie-Ange's intense interest in these SW minority cultures. Robert K. Liu was greatly impressed by our large number of SW minorities pieces - several of which he had not himself seen - when he reviewed *Ethnic Jewellery and Adornment*. There are actually quite a few pieces which we did not manage to include, as this is an area in which we have very actively collected, and we still got some good pieces as late as about 2006 or even 2007 - but the situation has greatly deteriorated since then. People used to offer us good pieces they had collected "in the field", but now they cannot find them any more, and what one sees on e.g. eBay is in general quite dreadful: one difficulty is that in many cases the shapes of the pieces there is not even remotely traditional, but entirely "new". This could be a sign of admirable cultural activity, but unfortunately the pieces are on the whole very ugly indeed. It seems as though the designers of these new pieces have lost their way. In principle, we have no objection to a new piece if it is good - but that is usually not often the case, in SW China ... A really disappointing situation, as the craftsment there have traditionally exhibited such a great sense of design. In addition to these novelty pieces, the industry continues to make reproductions of older pieces, but while these often show better taste, most collectors would long since have bought them, and the new ones are being made in very large numbers, which is not exactly encouraging either if one collects (though they are often good to wear, perhaps particularly the armbands) ... We are very happy that we bought good collectible pieces when we could. We have some "doubles" which we intend to sell, but haven't got ourselves organised to do so yet.
hi Joost, there are actually reproductions available. i've seen them for sale in china, but the craftsmanship is very crude and it's very obvious that those are newly made and not made of silver. i thought about buying one just for fun and as comparison material, but didn't do so in the end.
however, some newly made twisted spiral necklaces and bracelets are actually quite attractive in their own right and do show some craftsmanship and offer good value for people who are fashion minded. i sold 2 typical style neckrings made of alpaca to someone who wanted to use in them in a fashion show.
i prefer buying older genuine items that are generally made of silver, but in the case of the yao spike male headdress i also recently posted here, it might not be silver or not high grade silver probably.i liked the craftmanship enough to buy it without thinking too much about the material. i should buy a silver testing liquid to test it.
Hi howah, - It's actually not surprising if even the bird piece is reproduced, as most pieces are. However, as you imply, your own piece (and the same is true of ours) has a finesse, softness, and gentleness which a modern piece would find hard to imitate, so I am sure you're right that they are easy to pick. I should add here, by the way, that I have not really seriously looked at the market for something like 3 or 4 years now, simply because the scene deteriorated so greatly, but I fully believe you if some modern pieces of merit are nevertheless made, and I feel encouraged by what you say about some of the designs being actually good. This, I feel, is the essential point: one does not buy Chinese minorities jewellery, I believe firmly, primarily for its age (for many of the forms have been maintained in much the same way for a long time), or - I would add - the materials: pieces totally made of high quality silver are rare (especially when compared with those in the Golden Triangle), and the collector has to put up with all sorts of mixtures, and indeed alpaca/paktong, which, while less valuable (of course) than something with silver in it, is often even so a very acceptable metal for what is made. Some of the best traditional pieces seem REGULARLY to have been made of this alloy, yet to be very fine, and to reject them on the basis of the metal used would culturally be quite foolish. One has to adapt one's western ideas to what the culture does: the west is obsessed with silver content, but Chinese minorities are not. They do, of course, like the LOOK of silver, but a fair few pieces that look like solid silver are in fact very thickly plated; in other cases only 30% of the metal is silver; etc. I think all this is to be accepted as characteristic of the culture, and the value of the pieces usually lies primarily in the design and craftmanship. Of course, if one gets a piece with a very high solid silver content, and old to boot, that does add to the value - but one would be unwise to expect very many pieces to be of that kind. I do agree it is a good idea of testing for silver, but do remember that if you have a very thickly plated piece (quite common among the MIao and Dong) it will show like solid silver, and even an acid test may not reveal anything else. I do know for a fact, however, that quite regularly these ultra heavy (actually unwearable) pieces frequently consist of a copper - or other base metal - inner core, which has been covered with very high quality silver, very thickly, to make it look impressive (and it is!). Often there is a LOT of silver there, and one can only see - if one is lucky - that nevertheless the piece is plated by looking sharply at the edges or other spots where it is very difficult to produce a thick layer, or for that not to wear through fairly quickly. And all this makes sense. Several of the big pieces weigh some kilograms, and would always have been absurdly expensive to make in solid silver. In the case of the Yao headdress I felt that the piece looked new and not a very good quality silver alloy if it does indeed contain silver, but I did not mind for the same reason that you didn't: it showed a very good design. Coming back to the alpaca pieces: there are several which are extremely difficult to make, using textile techniques and creating wonderful textures and designs that way. Many of these are so well made that people automatically assume they must be silver while in fact they are not. Even a skilled craftsman, however, takes weeks to make such pieces, and the number of smiths is growing smaller all the time. I am very happy to own non-silver pieces if they are of such artistic quality!! I also have some quite modern pieces which I love and which purists with a western outlook would reject, but which I think represent good art - age is by no means my only criterion in the case of a culture like this. But, although I am glad you have seen some good modern things, I am sure yo
FINISH OF PREVIOUS POST: I am sure you would even so agree with me that now a good many ugly ones are also made, alas. And yes, on the whole I too prefer to buy older pieces if I can, and prefer various qualities of silver manufacture over alpaca/paktong, all other matters being equal. That is how, in fact, we have collected. Our last two pieces were bought in Amsterdam of all places, and I think about 3 years ago. They were good, but the dealer pointed out that she had only three pieces in stock while only some years before there would have been dozens. The number of good pieces held by dealers in Europe has in my experience markedly slumped, especially since around 2005 or so. In part, I think this is also due to the fact that many stopped buying from about 2002 on, as reproductions, fakes etc greatly increased in quantity, and many much coarser and "fantasy" pieces were being made. That process has on the whole markedly accelerated. I think it is still very worthwhile to buy good pieces that come one's way, for, although no doubt a number of good pieces will still be made, their number is certain to slump, with fewer smiths knowing the old highly skilled ways likely to appear, cost likely to rise, materials to become more debased, and designs in many cases likely to deteriorate. That, at least, appears to have been the common pattern. Yet in the 90s and early years of this century EXCELLENT pieces could be obtained, as the indigenous population sold off its traditional jewellery in order to buy modern manufactured goods, and using flimsy crowns etc only at festivals, often for tourists rather than themselves. This is the common story with ethnic jewellery: it gets sold off when a culture becomes westernised, technically, and is then not replaced. That is also why increasingly the best ethnic jewellery is found in the West, though in some countries (e.g. India) younger and wealthier collectors are now beginning to buy back their own cultural/historical objects. However, that often means, e.g. in China, porcelain vases, and other "important" objects rather than Chinese minorities jewellery. I reckon its time will come, though!!
Hey, there are so many ugly fakes out there on the internet and especially ebay and the (chinese) dealers charge such ridiculous prices, sometimes I feel the urge to send the sellers an angry email to tell them how ridiculous they are!
Amsterdam is actually a good place for buying good old ethnic jewellery, I bought some nice things there. I'm actually surprised that nobody has commented yet on the Yao spike headdress since it's actually a nice authentic piece, but I do think it's not very old. It looks really new cause I gave it a good clean. When I bought it, it had considerable dirt and discoloration on it. But I don't like the 'dirty' look on my stuff so I am a bit of a obsessed cleaner.
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