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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Very beautiful engraving. They look a little like the enamelled ones that we saw some weeks ago.
yes it is. somewhat same in its pattern as it should be they are almost from same area. the enamel ones are mostly from Multan. but anyhow finding such pieces are now extremely difficult.
SOLD this morining.
i wish i could keep this for longer time but BADLUCK its gone now.
Thelma, you are right: these are indeed like the (better known though not frequent) anklets which we have seen enamelled versions of. And I think that the similarity in shape makes it therefore the more likely that those enamelled versions are also from the Sindh Valley in Pakistan.
@Joost Daaldar.. thank you for your kind words.
exactly sir as the person who brought it to me said that i saw them with a women in Sindh and gave my offer and after some efforts he agreed to sell it to me. all his story make it 100 percent sure that these are from Sindh. further the pattern is also similar to enamel one.
Nooristan ARt Gallery: thank you so much for this further explanation. Like you, I would have been very sorry to let this distinguished pair of anklets go!! I am so glad you posted it. And we agree: as these are from the Sindh Valley, and as some of the most informed people had also classified the enamel ones as Sindhi, I think we can be very confident, given the considerable similarities between the designs of both these and the enamelled counterparts that the origin of the designs, at the very least, is the Sindh Valley - that would remain so even if any of them were produced in Multan as well (imitating the Sindh designs). This post of yours has been a great help to me in confirming what I have for long felt about the enamelled ones, i.e. that they were - at least stylistically - Sindhi. and probably produced there as well. In his *Arab & Islamic Silver* (1981), Saad Al-Jadir (who owns the biggest collection in his subject area) writes on p. 175: "In each of the four provinces of Pakistan one can find the mixed cultural strains typical of the country as a whole, while each area still preserves individual characteristics. SINDHI WORK IS THE RICHEST IN COLOUR AND VARIETY, MAINTAINING A TRUE FOLK TRADITION" (my capitals). He also shows us two very fine enamelled examples on p. 199. Work from Multan is in general far more predictable and less complex, but to some people it would seem that ALL Pakistani enamelled silver comes from Multan, due to the fact that so much does indeed come from there!!
Joost Daaldar: thank you sir for such beautiful words exactly same is the case with you are 100 percent right.
Very interesting to compare the anklets/bracelets, Joost. Although these anklets look a lot like the others, particularly their form, they do have distinguishing features. I doubt that they were ever intended to be enamelled, unlike the others which have grooves to catch the enamel even on the inside. These seem to gain their colour from their glass bead cabochons. The engraved design, although still rather formal, also flows in a more plant-like way. etc. Slightly different from their enamelled counterparts? Would be interesting know more about the making of jewellery in this region but where to find more information?
Thank you for those good comments, Thelma. Sure there are differences, quite plainly, and I never intended to suggest that such anklets as the ones above were - or were intended to be - enamelled. It would indeed be good if there were full descriptions of these and the enamelled anklets available, and it is conceivable that there is a publication somewhere, but if so it is not, I believe, well-known, for I have gone to great trouble to find examples, in more or less scholarly publications, of the enamelled ones, and even those are in my experience scarce. The ones above seem to be rarer still. In the meantime, we can only speculate! My sense is that possibly the ones above exhibit a stage of development preceding the enamelled versions. One can imagine how, with some re-arrangement, the design for the ones above could fairly easily have been turned into somewhat different anklets specially prepared to be enamelled. Or possibly they existed alongside each other at some stage. Whatever happened precisely, the similarities seem to me sufficient to indicate that the two types are closely related, despite the differences, which you are quite right to point to: for example, one could not easily imagine the ones of this kind to have been enamelled, while the grooves which you rightly mention were probably made specifically for the enamelled versions.
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