Necklace with coins and beads

The combination of different types of silver beads suggests that this necklace is composed of beads of different origins that have been strung together again. This is also indicated by the visible difference in silver content: the bronze ribbed beads with a low silver content stand out against the openwork oval beads with loop decoration that have a higher silver content. No dating of the beads can be deduced from the dates of the coins. \The incorporation of coins into jewelry was an established custom in Yemen. They used both Yemeni coins (as is the case here) and foreign ones, such as the Maria Theresa Thaler, Indian rupees and Saudi coins. They served not only for decoration but also represented an economic value: the weight in silver linked to the silver content. It showed the wealth of the woman and her family (in law) to those around her. After all, the surplus of silver coins was worn visibly around the neck. An additional advantage was that the coins did not have to be worked on in order to function as a pendant, except for the soldering of the fastening eye. Nowadays, incorporating coins into gold necklaces is popular: the precious metal gold is more valuable than silver and their incorporation cuts down on manufacturing costs (info 2011).This necklace consists of a strung chain of silver beads and eighteen silver coins with a cylindrical amulet holder with bells in the center. The bells consist of two driven halves which are soldered together; on two of them granules are soldered at the bottom. A three-colored onyx bead is strung between the two suspension eyes of the amulet holder.There are three different types of silver beads: the majority of the larger beads (seventeen in all) are bronze-colored, bi-conical in shape, and consist of two driven halves with a ribbed surface soldered together. In addition, there are centrally four openwork oval beads of silver threads soldered together and four dense faceted beads. The string is of nylon and red. There are four different types of coins: six Yemeni of 25 fals and six of 50 fals, all with the combination of years 1974-1394; five Saudi of half a riyal with the Islamic year 1392 (1972) and mentioning Faisal ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Su'ud and finally a Saudi coin of 1 qirsh from 1386 (1966). They are laced both with the head side and the mint side forward.