Day 133 - Necklace








March 7, 2019

In gallery 355, which is devoted to the art of Island Southeast Asia (Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, western New Guinea), I'm again struck by the ornamentation of everyday objects: beautifully carved spoons made of horn from Timor Island; a Sumatran lute on whose tip sits a carved human figure wearing a conical brass hat and clutching his bent knees; a wooden granary door, also from Sumatra, on which is carved a large lizard, a symbol of fertility; a baby carrier from Borneo adorned with fine white, black, red, green, and yellow beading. Certainly, the spoons, the lute, the granary door, and the baby carrier did  not require decoration to be functional. Yet through the ages, humans have chosen to add beauty and meaning to objects in common  use.  

Today's object, a necklace of copper alloy and gold made on Nias Island in Indonesia in the late19th or early 20th century, could not have been in common use, but it is indeed beautiful.  Crescnt-shaped and perhaps 12 inches across in length and 5 inches wide at the crescent's widest point,  the body of the necklace is composed of myriad delicate metal pleats, each no more than a quarter inch wide. Gold objects were symbols of wealth and status, says the description, rather unnecessarily; necklaces like this one were commissioned in connection with feasts in which the merit of the wearer was celebrated. The description further informs us that "The scale and quantity of ornaments an individual was able to commission and wear served as tangible marks of his or her status."  So what else is new?

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