Among Zoroastrian burial items, there is a camel-shaped zoomorphic OSTADON lying there. It was found…
Jewelry was one of the highly developed crafts in the period of the Uzbek khanates.
Local jewelers often used silver in their work. Gold was used less frequently due to its high price, but it was widely utilized, especially from the late 19th century, for gilding.1 For poor people, jewelry was usually made from silver-plated copper. Widely used gems were turquoise, carnelian, lapis lazuli, garnet, ruby and beryl. Items of jewelry were also decorated with mother-of-pearl, corals and pearls.
Champlevé was another popular technique used in jewelry. But the most common way of decorating was embossing – bosma, where one could get various kinds of relief patterns on the surface. With the help of bosma, hollow balls were made of two separate hewn hemispheres joined together. Bosma was also used in other artistic crafts, such as ceramics and artistic leatherwork.
Some decorations consisted of a thin metal case filled with a special compound, which made them look more massive and expensive. Flat relief engraving was another method to create patterns. A sketch was drawn on metal with a special reed pen, without using any templates. The refinement and brightness of ornamentation depended solely on the talent of the master. Jewelry items were also decorated with filigree and granulation.
Jewelry served not only for aesthetic, but also for magical purposes. The number and types of items indicated the social status of their owners. For example, women put on a complete set of jewelry on their wedding days. It consisted of many items. The head of the bride was decorated with a diadem, which had many varieties. One of the most popular forms was the tilla bargak diadem (golden leaf). It was combined with crescent-shaped pendants – mohi tillo, which were most often worn in a pair on the temples or individually on the forehead. The diadems of Samarkand were distinguished by their special filigree. In the jewelry collection of the Náprstek Museum, objects dating back to the late 19th – early 20th centuries predominate. Samarkand jewelry is represented by a front-temporal adornment called mokhi tillo, khalka filigree earrings and small kozik isirga earrings, which became the property of the museum in 1891 and 1902.
You can learn more about the topic in the book-album "The Collection of the Czech Republic" (Volume XVI) in the series "Cultural Legacy of Uzbekistan in the World Collections".
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