Hair ornament

Gold hairpiece. This piece is a typical south-Indian (Tamil Nadu) temple ornament. The piece was worn and sold back to the jeweller. It is customary in India to sell gold jewelry in financially difficult times. If there were ever diamonds in this piece, they would have been removed and sold by now. The diamonds glass polki, garnet (and possibly ruby) are set in a technique related to kundan. Purchased from jewellery house Amrapali, Jaipur, March 2011.‖ The piece of jewellery came into the Amrapali collection recently (possibly through various intermediaries). It probably belonged to a temple dancer. Why she parted with the piece and whether this was voluntary is no longer verifiable. The hairpiece unites two well-known Indian goldsmithing techniques, with the kundan technique of North India being closely related in the way the gems are set. At the same time, because of the application of the famous southern ajour technique, the piece is more 'open' than a kundan jewel. Presumably the relationship with the kundan technique can be traced back to the Mogul era, when there was intensive contact between the southern and northern court cultures. Since the 1970s, the owners of Amrapali (Rajiv Arora and Rajesh Ajmera) have been studying regional goldsmith traditions throughout India and buying up pieces. Unlike most jewelers, they don't melt the pieces down, but take the jewelry apart to study it or to incorporate it into a new piece, in a modern design. The large pendant (obj. no. 6117-6, cat.no.49) is one such assembled piece.ith Saskia Konniger, The Hidden Garden, Goldsmiths in North India, KIT Publishers, 2011, Cat.no.48