Pendant

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Pendant

India, Rajasthan, Jaipur, 1879
Jewelry and Adornments; pendants
Enameled gold; European-style gold mount set with four diamonds; glass backing
3 1/8 x 1 3/4 x 5/16 in. (7.94 x 4.45 x 0.79 cm)
Gift of Stephen Markel in memory of his father, Gordon Markel (AC1996.168.1)
Not currently on public view

Curator Notes

...
This stylish gold pendant is atypically ornamented on the front with an inset diamond-shaped panel featuring translucent enamels of brilliant red, green, and dark blue; opaque white; and traces of opaque powder-blue enamel in a hybrid floral composition. The symmetrical arrangement is centered by an eight-petaled open blossom. It has large lotuses at the four points and smaller lotuses at intermediary positions. Connecting all the blossoms is an intricate network of translucent green stems, split acanthus leaves, and bracts set in gold. The opaque white background is punctuated with hatching of fine parallel lines of gold. The pendant form is modeled upon mid-19th-century Victorian design. The pendant is one of the very few signed and dated examples of Jaipur enamel work. The back bears a hand-chiseled inscription in English, "Gooma Sing, Jeypore [Ghuma Singh, Jaipur], 1879." Ghuma Singh was an award-winning Sikh enameler from Jaipur, whose long career spanned the second half of the 19th century. He and his fellow Jaipur enamelers were not directly employed in a court studio. Rather, enameling was a hereditary occupation that was practiced at home jointly by family members. Jaipur enamelers worked on commission for the court and wealthy jewelry merchants. Jaipur enameling is traditionally but unconvincingly said to have begun with the arrival of five Sikh enamelers from Lahore at the court of Amber (the ancestral court of Jaipur) during the reign of Man Singh (r. 1589–1614).
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Bibliography

  • Markel, Stephen. Mughal and Early Modern Metalware from South Asia at LACMA: An Online Scholarly Catalogue. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2020. https://archive.org/details/mughal-metalware (accessed September 7, 2021).