Turkmen women wear a variety of different headdresses called sinsile. This piece, an example of the type worn by young girls every day until they are married, is remarkable for its opulence. It is a crown richly embellished with 377 turquoise beads and 33 table-cut carnelians. Thirteen pendants in teardrop form suspended from chains hang from the bottom section of the crown. The upper section is decorated with three half moons, a symbol of the rise and decline of human life.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Crown
Date:late 19th–early 20th century
Geography:Country of Origin Central Asia or Iran
Medium:Silver; with silver shot, table-cut carnelians, turquoise beads, and gilded loop-in-loop chains with pendants
Dimensions:H. 9 in. (22.9 cm) W. 11 1/2 in. (29.2 cm)
Classification:Metal
Credit Line:Gift of Marshall and Marilyn R. Wolf, 2006
Accession Number:2006.544.8
Crown
This work illustrates one type of bridal crown that combines Turkmen and other urban or tribal decorative traditions. In the nineteenth century the cities of Khiva, Bukhara, and Samarqand each produced different variants of the bridal crown[14] which was worn on the forehead, above the eyebrows.
The height, basic shape, construction, and hanging chains with pendants seen in this crown are all features shared with Turkmen bridal crowns. However, the setting of the stones and the crescent-shaped terminals are clearly related to Uzbek jewelry produced in urban workshops, while pseudo-granulation is characteristic of Kazakh ornaments. The characteristics of both these decorative traditions await further study, making a firm attribution of this piece difficult. One of the most richly decorated works in the collection, the crown is covered with a sumptuous overall pattern that embodies the Islamic tradition of amor infiniti. The relief decoration uses more than four hundred small turquoise beads and circular and oval carnelians in teardrop, oval, and round shapes. The design is executed with consummate skill, using contrasting colors, shapes, and textures to great effect.
Layla S. Diba in [Diba 2011]
Footnotes:
14. Komleva, Galina. Jewellery: Museum of Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR. Translated by Sergei Volynets. Leningrad, 1988, p. 17; Sychova, Natalya. Iuvelirnye ukrasheniia narodov Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana, XIX–XX vekov: Iz sobraniia Gosudarstvennogo Muzeia Iskusstva Narodov Vostoka / Traditional Jewellery from Soviet Central Asia and Kazakhstan from the Collection of the Museum of Oriental Art. Moscow, 1984, pp. 26–31 and figs. 1–3; Kalter, Johannes, and Margareta Pavaloi, eds. Uzbekistan: Heirs to the Silk Road. New York, 1997, p. 283, fig. 566, p. 284, fig. 567, and p. 305, fig. 615.
Marshall and Marilyn R. Wolf, Toronto, Canada (until 2006; gifted to MMA)
Diba, Layla S. "Silver Ornaments from the Marshall and Marilyn R. Wolf Collection." In Turkmen Jewelry. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011. no. 12, pp. 58–59, ill. p. 59 (color).
One of several new Met books that will accompany the November 1 reopening of the Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia, this month's featured publication will be the first English-language book devoted to the extraordinary silver jewelry of the nomadic Turkmen people of Central Asia.
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