The art of jewelers is one of the most pronounced phenomena in Eastern cultures. It is distinguished in its fulfillment and originality of artistic images, and carries within immense sources of expression. Jewelry art of ancient Central Asia is a complex, non-synonymous phenomenon. In order to comprehend its conformity to natural laws, as well as such conformity of Central Asian culture as a whole, it is necessary to understand its meaning on the basis of new information provided by the latest developments and discoveries in science, especially archaeology.

The aesthetic language of art encompassing a vast historical period is very complex and can be difficult to read. In order to understand those artistic facets that make jewelry art from IV BC-IV AD unique we will utilize the following tools:

1. A set of major concepts used in applied art (i.e. a type of “dictionary”)
2. A set of rules that define how these concepts can be blended and transformed within the “text” of the aesthetic language (i.e. “grammar”)

Variety of forms and designs is an identifying feature of ancient Central Asian jewelry. The major types of adornments that existed during the given time period are distinguished by principles of wearing, resulting from ritual and socio-cultural peculiarities of the given type of article. Thus, classification of articles depends on direct connections with the conventions of social etiquette and the aesthetic forms of everyday behavior, hence we distinguish: head, temple, ear, neck, chest, hand, and foot adornments, as well as sew-on pieces, and finally votive plates and small articles. Let us consider the most frequently found types and forms of jewelry.

Jewelry is one of the most conservative arts, where technology and decorative elements prevail without fast changes. It is a property of jewelry art that give us for example a great opportunity to find Buddhists elements in 19th-20th centuries. One of the many examples of Tajik jewelry is a diadem. Traditional wedding crown or diadem is well-known as a "Kosh-tillo" or "Tillya-Kosh" (Golden eyebrows) has a heraldic composition of lion, monkey and turtle figures. These three animals are representative of Buddha.

Oxus jewelry Each jewelry item represents a certain information symbol. Drawn from everyday life, as well as from epos and myths, apothropaic emblems found in jewelry had a magic power. The popularity of every particular subject was associated with concepts of the epoch. The jeweller was involved in the events of his epoch; ideas and concepts of the time were not foreign for him and were frequently reflected in his art.

One of the well-known treasures of XXth century was found in the Northern Afghanistan- “Golden Hill” or Tillya-tepe.

Tillya-tepe provided researchers with samples of ensembles of adornments. Here in 1978, a joint soviet-afghan expedition uncovered six rich burials (five female and one male), in which many adornments that date back to the begging of this era were preserved. Altogether, 20000 gold jewelry articles with insertions of precious and semi-precious stones were found. The female complexes differ stylistically from each other reflective not only of the differences in the ethnicity of the buried women but also of the differences in fashion. The abundance of jewelry articles in these burials suggests the existence of a jewelry workshop, for such a large amount of sew-on disks could have only been made by several masters.

My acquaintance with the art of Hovaling, had only found an insignificant part of jewelry articles that included "brooches-fibulas," which is known as "kulfi-girebon".[1] The Fund Collection of jewelry articles, at the Museum of Ethnography, replenished its collection with jewelry pieces made by Kulyabian jewelers. These articles also include the well-known brooches. These brooches were not only made of silver, but also from German silver (an alloy of nickel and copper).

Tajik jewelry-making, like any other form of cultural self-expression by the people, is an original art. Visitors to this Central Asian republic have always been attracted by the bright garments of the natives and the opulence of ornaments their women use. Russian jewelry designer Vitali Ivanov was similarly enchanted the first time he came there.

The period of the middle ages in Central Asia is distinguished by its high level of science, arts, culture and development. We see evidence of this not only in written sources, but also in cultural relics as jewelry. Since very few original jewelry articles are at our disposal, in our analysis we will consider articles depicted on wall-paintings and throughout living premises of the period from V to VIII centuries.

20 july 2007, Asianart.com
Traditional earrings in the villages and tribal areas of India are manifestations of symbolism, religious meaning and social significance. A woman wears a particular type of earring as a sign of identity, of membership in the defined social group into which she was born. Wearing the specific earrings of her community, she continues the tradition of her ancestors.

In a field work of ten years, I could locate and describe in detail 170 specific types of earrings, of which a majority are worn until the present day. Many more are extinct or neglected, others will follow this fate in the future under the present fast economic growth and impact from the west, which erodes values of tradition and heritage.

One of the most interesting and conspicuous traditional Indian earring types is the snake earring which can be found in three far-apart areas of the continent: Orissa in the East, Tamil Nadu in the South and Gujarat/Rajasthan in the West.

© Waltraud Ganguly
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