Collecting ethnic jewellery: 4 filters

Collecting ethnic jewellery: 4 filters

by | Tips for collectors

collecting traditional jewellery

Collecting ethnic jewellery: 4 filters you may not be aware of

Collecting jewellery and dress: we do it because we believe these items to be important, and we want to ensure their passing on into the future. But there is one aspect of collecting that can turn it into a double-edged sword. On the one hand, yes, these items sometimes only survive because of collecting. But an overlooked aspect of collecting is its other side: collecting inevitably is destructive as well. How does that work, and should we be worried?

Selection filter 1: the course of history

First off, no material culture survives in its entirety. That is already visible within your own lifetime: who still has everything (and I mean everything) like clothing, toys, books etc. from their youth? At some point, you have decided to keep some things and give others away. A process that repeats itself again and again: selecting is a natural process. That goes for adornment and dress, too. Whether it is family heirlooms passed down generations or pieces offered for sale to cultural outsiders, whatever survives to this day is based on selections. Even what you inherit from your grandmother is her personal selection: at least I’m assuming she did not own all jewellery in existence.⁠ So, when you collect jewellery, this is already a selection as a result of the choices made during the wearer’s life. These choices do not have to be voluntarily: people displaced as a result of war and violence may not have been able to hang on to anything at all.

Jewellery selection filter 2: demand and supply

Whatever ends up being offered to buyers, is filtered a second time. This is where it gets interesting. Because buyers get offered what sells: as with any market, here as well demand is tied to offer.⁠ And that second filter is incredibly important. Pieces that do not ‘sell well’ slowly disappear from the material record. An example is jewellery that has been partly dismantled when its wearer needed to sell some of it. These ‘damaged goods’ are not always recognized for what they are: a historic source.⁠ After all, buyers, especially if these are cultural outsiders, rarely appreciate dented and broken pieces. As a result, these are the first to go. They are melted down, reused, and any material traces of the use of jewellery as financial asset and savings account vanish with them.

Jewellery selection filter 3: focusing on published, well-known pieces

The next stage is that the selected pieces, the ones that sell well, then become the norm. These are the pieces that get shown in exhibitions, that are published in books and shared online. That fame creates a third filter, because it increases demand into these better-known pieces. The flip side of this is that relatively unknown pieces never make the cut: they do not sell well, as they are not all that familiar to the prospective buyer. I often get asked whether a certain piece is ‘real’ as it has no parallels in books, and I know of several books that are used as a collectors’ manual. That is not to say books are useless! Quite the contrary, I love books and all sorts of publications on jewellery: the more the better to help spread awareness that this is heritage. The point is to be aware that there is more out there than books can accommodate.

Another symptom is the rejection of pieces that are not exactly similar to well-known parallels: a whole new set of parameters for ‘authentic’ pieces emerges based on publications, while the original wearers did not consider such distinctions relevant and worked with what they had at hand. It’s an endless loop that results in the gradual loss of both things and information.

Jewellery selection filter 4: collecting only things, not their context

That last element, information, is the fourth filter. The focus on collecting objects and not necessarily on all the information that comes with it, in turn deletes that information over time. Things without context are just that: random things. They lose their capacity to speak and their function as a historic source. If collectors don’t write down what they know about their pieces, how will the next generation know what they’re looking at…?⁠ I have addressed a few examples of how that lack of knowledge results in misinformation being spread here. It is incredibly important to preserve not only things, but also what they stand for – while being aware that this is only a fraction of a much wider world.

Building a meaningful jewellery collection: actionable things you can do today

Collecting is by definition selecting. We only see part of the material culture, and that does not even have to be a representative part. No matter how beautiful or extensive a collection is: you’re always working with a result of a chain of selections, never with the original dataset.⁠ That is simply the way it is, and thank goodness that not every single thing is kept – what would we do with it? My point is that it is important to be aware of this process when collecting, buying or selling.

Your actions in each of these steps actively contribute to the safeguarding of heritage jewellery. Here are a few things you can start with today:

Write down those stories of your jewellery travels.

Digitize those receipts (if you have any).

Jot down a few lines in your notebook when a seller shared a piece of information with you.

Download my free guide to organize your collection step by step here and start building not just a collection, but your legacy.

Every little bit helps. It’s in these seemingly small acts that you can contribute a great deal to the preserving of jewellery and the world it comes from!

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Do you own a collection? Please do try and document it as much as possible. Every little note helps! A free guide on how to get started with that is here.

Are you wondering how your collection might benefit the communities whose heritage this is? Please consider the work of the Qilada Foundation, my non-profit initiative aimed at reconnecting jewellery collections with their communities of origin.

References

An introductory article on the history of collecting as a phenomenon is W.G.Burgess 2020, State of the Field: The History of Collecting, in: History

The Society for the History of Collecting covers the concept collecting from many angles: see more here

Sigrid van Roode

Sigrid van Roode is an archeologist, ethnographer and jewellery historian. She considers jewellery heritage and a historic source. She has authored several books on jewellery from North Africa and Southwest Asia, and on archaeological jewellery. Sigrid has lectured for the Society of Jewellery Historians, the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden and the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, among many others. She curates exhibitions and teaches online courses on jewellery from North Africa & Southwest Asia.

What’s in a name?

What’s in a name?

by | Opinion

jewellery and identity

What’s in a name?

Updated Jan 24, 2024

One of the most complex issues when working with jewellery is how to put the origin of a piece into words. Looking at a hallmark is only the beginning. The hallmark systems, which operate on a national level, can inadvertently be counterproductive in attributing jewellery: when a piece is hallmarked in one particular country, this does not mean that the type is exclusive to that country.

There is much more to the identity of a jewellery piece: who made it, who wore it, where, and when. Here are some thoughts on how we identify jewellery and from which point of view we do that.

A Ouled Nail Bedouin woman and silver bracelets.
A foulet khamsa from Morocco, with a bright green glass cabochon.

Which name to use: the issues with countries

In most jewellery books, you will find pieces of jewellery assigned to a particular country. That seems rather straightforward, but is in reality quite complicated. Most of the borders delineating countries we know today have come into existence after World War II and the various wars for independence. These borders are disputed in several cases, too.

So especially when a jewellery piece is a little older, the country as we know it today may have had a different geographical range, may not have existed at all when the piece was made or may have been colonized after the piece was made.

Modern state boundaries also cut through age-old systems of exchange and cultural space: they have been conceived on the drawing board during colonial times. That is reflected in their straight and angular lines, disregarding natural boundaries such as rivers or mountain ranges that defined cultural spheres of contact.

Identities: cities, towns and tribes

Arbitrary though they may be, modern borders have a compartmentalizing effect: national identity does not always take transnational identities into account. Sometimes, this even leads to disputes about whether a piece of jewellery is, for example, Moroccan or Algerian, Algerian or Tunisian.. But that distinction is not always relevant, because a piece of jewellery can be both: the particular Amazigh tribe that makes use of it, may very well live in more than one country.

So, when referring to countries, it is always important to remain aware that these are countries as they are now – and that countries are not equal to cultures.

That is different for cities and towns. These may be older than the country they are currently located in. Cities and towns also cater to a larger clientele.

An example are the bracelets shown above: these were made in Cairo, and worn in Sinai, southern Palestine and southern Jordan. The Bedouin that purchased these bracelets inhabited this large area, which now consists of three different countries.

So do we call it an Egyptian bracelet, because it was made there?

A Palestinian bracelet, because it was worn there?

Do we call it Israeli or Jordanian, even though the bracelet was made before these countries themselves existed?

Or is it a Bedouin bracelet, because these are the people of whose culture this was part?

Identities: religion and movement

Another aspect of identification is often religion. This is where it gets even more complicated, especially in the sphere of creation. Many master craftsmen of jewellery were Jewish, but does that make a piece they created Jewish, too? Craftsmen catered to clientele from all religions, throughout history.

An example are the two Coptic silversmiths living in Bahariyya Oasis, Egypt, who created jewellery for an almost exclusively Muslim clientele. Are their pieces Christian?

And what to think of itinerant craftsmen, who traveled through a, sometimes vast, region to create jewellery for a variety of patrons? Is their nationality, tribal affiliation or religion even relevant to the identity of the pieces they made, just because they made them?

It is – when the jewellery they make serves to explicitly identify its wearers as belonging to a certain group. And that brings me to the topic of identity.

Jewellery and cultural identity

I believe the key is to understand how jewellery is very closely linked to identity. Now ‘identity’ is of course a notoriously fluid concept, interpreted differently depending on context.

But the picture that emerges is that the backbone of identity often is the locality or tribe a person belongs to, with religion coming in second and expressed in significant, but relatively small differences in dress and adornment, and modern nations following only after that.

Jewellery worn by Jewish, Christian and Muslim women can be completely identical, because they both live in a region with a certain notion of what ‘their’ jewellery looked like. The foulet khamsa shown above for example was worn by women of all three religions in a certain region of Morocco – read more about this ornament here.

So, when determining where a piece is from, I feel that all these factors should be taken into account instead of just pinpointing an origin in a country as we know it today.

There is the question of where it was created and by whom, who would have been wearing it and in which geographical range, and where it eventually was sold.

A piece can be simultaneously Yemeni and Saudi when it’s part of a community living on either side of a modern border. It can be Jewish and Islamic when created by a Jewish craftsman for a Muslim patron.

All of these aspects form part of the identity of the piece, and together they paint a much more vivid picture of the people who wore these multi-dimensional pieces. Trying to classify a piece as exclusively this-or-that ultimately says more about us, than about the wearers themselves.

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Find out more about the changes over time in jewellery and identity in the e-course on History of Jewellery!

More articles on jewellery? Browse them all here!

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Would you like to quote this article? Please do! Here’s how:

S. van Roode, [write the title as you see it above this post], published on the Bedouin Silver website [paste the exact link to this article], accessed on [the date you are reading this article and decided it was useful for you].

Sigrid van Roode

Sigrid van Roode is an archeologist, ethnographer and jewellery historian. Her main field of expertise is jewellery from North Africa and Southwest Asia, as well as archaeological and archaeological revival jewellery. She has authored several books on jewellery. Sigrid has lectured for the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, Turquoise Mountain Jordan, and many others. She provides consultancy and research on jewellery collections for both museums and private collections, teaches courses and curates exhibitions. She is not involved in the business of buying and selling jewellery, and focuses on research, knowledge production, and education only.

Imaginarium

Imaginarium

by | Reviews

dreaming our futures out of our past

Making the Postcard Women’s Imaginarium

That personal adornment is heritage, will come as no surprise if you have been following this blog for a while. But what does that heritage mean to the communities that it belongs to, that produced it, that lived with it? The publication Making the Postcard Women’s Imaginarium. Dreaming our futures out of our past is a brilliant volume that questions, reverses, challenges and above all, deeply loves. It accompanied the exhibition held in London in the autumn of 2022, curated by Salma Ahmad Caller, which showed a variety of artists’ responses to the way in which their communities have been represented in the West.

 

Making the Postcard Women’s Imaginarium

Essay and work by Crit Team

Essay and work by Afsoon

Essay and work by Alia Derouiche Cherif

First off, what is an Imaginarium? The explanation on the back cover reads: ‘A place devoted to the imagination. An imaginarium is richly coloured by those who are doing the imagining.’ So, is all of this imagined? Yes and no. The heart of this project is formed by the many colonial postcards that have been produced of women in North Africa and Southwest Asia. These are images of women as Western photographers imagined them to be, part of an imaginary ‘Orient’ that mainly existed as counterpart to the West. But these women, however much they have been made to pose and dress (or undress) in a certain way, were real. They were someone’s mother, sister or daughter. Who were they? What did they want, believe, hope? The project centers around these women from three angles: throwing light, casting doubt, telling tales.

The Imaginarium-book is edited by Salma Ahmad Caller, who is also the curator of the exhibition and the creator of the project. She has worked with artists, researchers, writers, scholars and consultants, who each have their own relation to the postcard women, the past and the cultures that they come from. How we look at these images is shaped by our own lives, histories and cultural context, and so this book contains a caleidoscopic ensemble of personal interpretations and views. I will share a few of these next.

The essay and art by Hala Ghellali, Colonial Postcards from Libya. Reclaiming the songs of our heritage, is a very personal account of how research into postcards turned into a way of honouring and reclaiming heritage, and personal adornment in particular. She reconnects the silver jewellery items to their world of poetry, songs, experiences among women and shares with us how she feels about these postcards and how her art interacts with both these images, her personal experiences and her heritage. Hala has a book coming out on Libyan silver jewellery soon, and having read this powerful essay, I can only be grateful she will be sharing more of her research with us.

Ariella Aisha Azoulay contributes an essay in the form of a letter to one of the postcard women: a personal, intimate account of her own life and experiences blend in with imagined aspects of the life of the addressee, Mme Cohen. Enaya Hammad Othman writes about the representation of Palestinian women both by colonizers and nationalists: her observation that after a century of representation, women themselves are increasingly expanding their control over the meanings of cultural clothing (p. 100) reminded me of the work of Wafa Ghnaim of Tatreez and Tea. Alia Derouiche Cherif places the well-known photographs of Tunisian women by Lehnert & Landrock in a new context by juxtaposing it with the experiences of a descendant of the Ouled Nail in today’s Tunisia (p. 92). Afsoon, in her essay Somewhere between here and home, reflects on how these women have never consented to their image being shared so widely as they are now. In her art, she ‘nests’ them in things they might find familiar, such as jewellery, henna, beads, patterns and colours, in order to bring a little of ‘home’ to them. (p.33)

Reading this book has introduced me to many realities that exist besides the images that we are so used to seeing because they are shared over and over again. It caused me to question the realities that I am familiar with, and urged me to keep trying and imagine these in another light. The book addresses the effects and the pain of colonialism, racism and oppression, but what you will notice in every page, every artwork, every word, is love. This book and this project have created a space where the postcard women finally can feel safe and protected, where they are surrounded by gazes not looking for what might be gained from them, but what can be done for them: cover them, shield them, enhance them, adorn them.

If you want to start grasping how personal appearance matters personally, culturally, socially, historically, artistically, and how it is most definitely relevant for our world today, I highly recommend you to peruse this book: not just to read, but to take in the many layers of meaning in the artworks presented as well. A beautifully designed book that will get you thinking, questioning, and hoping.

Making the Postcard Women’s Imaginarium. Dreaming our Futures out of our Past. Curated and edited by Salma Ahmad Caller, 2022.

Full colour, 118 pages, in English. Published by Peculiarity Press

The book was a much loved gift from Salma Ahmad Caller.

More books on the importance of jewellery as carrier of identity and as a historic source? See my picks for you here! To get regular updates when a new book is presented, why not join the Jewellery List and have them sent to you…?

Sigrid van Roode

Sigrid van Roode is an archeologist, ethnographer and jewellery historian. She considers jewellery heritage and a historic source. She has authored several books on jewellery from North Africa and Southwest Asia, and on archaeological jewellery. Sigrid has lectured for the Society of Jewellery Historians, the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden and the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, among many others. She curates exhibitions and teaches online courses on jewellery from North Africa & Southwest Asia.

Amber

Amber

by | Reviews

From Antiquity to Eternity

Amber

I love books that deepen our understanding of one particular material, and so when I met dr. Rachel King briefly early in 2022 and she told me she was finishing a book on amber, I was excited! And rightly so: Amber. From Antiquity to Eternity is a most engaging and important discussion of all things amber.

 

Amber

What stands out from the first lines is how very well this book is written. It is accessible, relatable, easy to follow, but by no means simple. The volume explores the world of amber in great detail and with obvious knowledge. Given the amount of information and the complexity of the topics presented, clarity of writing is of great importance: you will enjoy the lucid and engaging style of Dr. King!

Amber discusses amber from a great many angles. In eight chapters, the past, present and future of this material that has enticed humans for millennia are presented. The first of these deals with definitions: what is amber, where is it found, what different types exist? In this chapter, the wide reach of this book becomes apparent. Themes like ecosystems, the science behind investigating amber and research angles yet to be pursued all are discussed. The next chapter picks up on this theme of research in presenting what earlier scholars believed amber to be. This results in a delightful overview of legends and myths, some of which may reflect actual archaeological finds – and with that, the next chapter on the use of amber artefacts by humans begins.

This focuses mainly on Europe and China, and contains a great overview of amber finds from prehistory and the early Middle Ages. The following chapter picks up the narrative in later periods and highlights the amber trade in all its aspects. How and where to find amber is followed up upon by the economic, political and social aspects of the amber industry. An excursion to the Dominican Republic shows the harsh reality of amber mining, and as such makes us reflect on not just past monopolies on the mining and selling of amber, but also of the present and future of the amber industry. The amber industry is fraught with illegal and unsafe extraction and trade: just one example is how in 2015, 90% of the amber from Ukraine has been extracted without permission (p. 94). This book certainly gets you thinking on the darker sides of those pretty amber jewellery items that are offered for sale far and wide.

It will come as no surprise that this material, that has played such an important part in trade networks and political power plays, has been imitated as well. I am obviously aware that amber is widely faked, but I did not know how far back this went – did you know a recipe to imitate amber existed in China some 1,800 years ago, and that imitations of amber have been found in Spain that date back 4,000 years? And there is so much more involved in imitations: from smell to inclusions, from weight to colour – and increasingly innovative and scientific ways to expose forgeries.

The chapter on jewellery is a varied introduction in the many forms amber is worn as adornment. That is not just as personal adornment, but also as precious objects to show wealth and status, such as handles, mouthpieces or inlays. In this chapter the colonial use of amber as commodity is addressed, and its fragrant capacities and its meaning in ritual are touched upon as well. This is a dazzling and kaleidoscopic portrait of the use of amber, which is continued in the next chapter on artworks in amber. The final chapters deals with lost amber in again a variety of angles: not just actual lost pieces, but also the loss of status and knowledge. In this chapter, the role of private and public collections in preserving amber surfaces. As many pieces with spectacular inclusions find their way into private collections, scientists may not always have access to study these (p. 217) – and studying amber and its eternal world within from a scientific perspective is relevant for not just our past, but our future as well. (so if you do have a collection: please give some thought on how to pass your collection on to the future)

The focus of this beautifully illustrated book is mainly on Europe and Asia. The use and meaning of amber in other parts of the world are only touched upon in a few instances, but that does not diminish the relevance of this book. What makes Amber so important is its wide scope. It places amber not just in an art historian or historical context, but also in a social, environmental and humanitarian context. Throughout the book, attention is called to the ethical and sustainability challenges with amber, the knowledge that can be gained from it about our climate and planet, and the inevitable choices that present themselves. The attractive way in which the author presents an accessible overview of the history and uses of amber as well as serious food for thought in one fluid narrative is rare, and I enjoyed every page of this book. Possibly the most powerful line I read is the last one, in which past and future of our planet meet: I highly recommend reading this book, as it will not only tell you everything you would want to know about amber itself, but also eminently shows the importance of our choices in studying and treating it for humanity – which stretches so far as our very survival.

Amber. From Antiquity to Eternity, by Rachel King, 2022.

272 pp., full-colour, in English. Published by Reaktion Books

Available online and with the publisher.

I purchased the book in the British Museum.

More on amber in jewellery is in this article. If books like these are of interest to you, join the Jewellery List and have reviews of new books sent to you!

Sigrid van Roode

Sigrid van Roode is an archeologist, ethnographer and jewellery historian. She considers jewellery heritage and a historic source. She has authored several books on jewellery from North Africa and Southwest Asia, and on archaeological jewellery. Sigrid has lectured for the Society of Jewellery Historians, the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden and the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, among many others. She curates exhibitions and teaches online courses on jewellery from North Africa & Southwest Asia.

Tenues des Touaregs

Tenues des Touaregs

by | Reviews

half a century of archive

De la féérie des sables/Tenues des Touaregs

Updated June 25, 2025

Like private collections, private archives are of great importance. It is through these that we may understand the context of collected things, but all too often, personal archives end up forgotten. That is why the two books about Tuareg dress and personal appearance by Dr. Catherine Vaudour are such treasures: they are dedicated to sharing half a century of research and documentation.

 

The Tuareg inhabit a vast region: from Algeria, Tunisia and Libya in the north to Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger in the south. Within this enormous region, many regional varieties in dress and personal appearance exist. Michel Vallet has documented Tuareg dress and adornment for half a century, between 1957 and 2007. During this timeframe, he carried out numerous visits to all corners of the Tuareg realm and documented his experiences in great detail: in photographs, but also superb drawings and gouaches, notes, maps and sketches.

Michel Vallet passed away in 2018, but wanted his work to be published. Dr. Catherine Vaudour, an ethnolinguist researching the Kel-Ajjer in Algeria, has taken it upon herself to make his work available to a larger audience. She is the founder of the Association Tatrit [1], aimed at preserving the material and immaterial heritage of the Tuareg. One of the many things she has initiated to this end is curating an exposition of a part of Michel Vallet’s work in Nantes (2015-2016), which allowed visitors to explore the world of the Tuareg through its material culture and the meticulous notes and drawings of Michel Vallet.

With this exhibition, a book was published: De la féérie des sables…cinquante ans chez les Touaregs – Fonds Michel Vallet. This beautiful book presents the full texts of the exhibition as well as many drawings and photographs. Starting out with a chapter on the linguistic variety in the Tamasheq language family, the reader is introduced to the way of living of the Tuareg: tents, herding, trading. A fold-out map with the various peoples belonging to the Kel-Tamasheq, ‘the people who speak Tamasheq’ is particularly illustrative as it shows the wide variety of the Tuareg world, which is often represented as a monolithic entity. After this introduction, the book continues with a treasure of detailed information on number of aspects of personal appearance: arms, veils, hairstyles, dress, personal care, and of course jewellery. That is not all: camel-riding and gear, music and poetry follow. And ‘detailed’ really does mean detailed: beautiful drawings of hairstyles, how to wrap a veil, forms of shields, shoes, schematics on how to mount and dismount a camel are presented alongside photographs that bring the Tuareg world to life in all its elegance and splendour.

The volume Les Tenues des Touaregs – Fonds documentaire de Michel Vallet, which followed in 2019, is an extraordinary work which presents the documentary archive left by Michel Vallet in more detail. It focuses on outfits and presents both male and female dress, once again in great detail. The diversity of jewellery shown itself is enormous and I enjoyed seeing how here, too, lines between peoples are blurred: ornaments often only labeled as ‘Tuareg’ are also worn by the Fulani and Ayneha, jewellery pieces such as the hawafir-necklaces and shariyyah-necklaces are worn by the Tuareg as well. Apart from jewellery, there is a wide variety of dress, headgear and other items of personal appearance. And finally, this volume also presents body aesthetic like temporary facial tattoos, even more hairstyles, schematics of dress, shoes and pieces of jewellery. Throughout the book, we see how dress and adornment evolve over time: there is no such thing as ‘static’ dress and this book testifies to change and exchange in great detail.

Both books include an overview of Michel Vallet’s life and a short bibliography. These bibliographies shed an interesting light on the Vallet archive as well. Judging from both bibliographies, only very few other studies have been used in compiling these two publications. You will not find the work of other scholars such as Dr. Anja Fischer, Dr. Thomas K. Seligman or Bert Flint here, for example, or even a single reference in another language than French. That means that the Michel Vallet archive retains its value as its own original source: the names of things, the customs, the ways of dressing and adorning are all as he observed them and noted them down. Both books have been published with great care and a scholarly eye for detail, but without secondary interpretations or placement in the current state of research in this field. This makes for an excellent starting point for comparison between this and other works in the field of Tuareg research: both books present an absolutely unique point of view. This is an original archive that has all the potential to further studies into Tuareg culture – and it is published and available.

It is only too sad that Mr. Vallet has not seen this publication of his life’s work. We should be indebted to dr. Vaudour for her tireless and knowledgeable efforts in achieving these publications, because like I said at the beginning: archives like these are easily forgotten, while they hold an immense amount of information of a world that is changing fast. The onerous task of inventorying, selecting and finally publishing is not an easy one, but I do hope these two books show how personal archives may be shared with researchers worldwide.

These are books that are of great importance, and I would even say they are indispensable for anyone interested in Tuareg dress and adornment. The drawings are breathtaking and plentiful, the photographs are a perfect complement in showing the objects of dress and adornment worn, the maps are illuminating and helpful, and the many sketches of construction details of for example leather bags will have you peer over them for hours. My recommendation would be to purchase both books, as they complement and build on one another. If you do not read French, don’t let that stop you: the books both contain about 95% images and these alone themselves are worth having on your shelf as a resource. Both are squarely in the category of ‘must-have’ reference books!

Les Tenues des Touaregs. Fonds documentaire de Michel Vallet. By Catherine Vaudour, 2019.

Full colour, 311 pages, in French. Published by Association Tatrit (48 euros)

 De la féérie des sables…cinquante ans chez les Touaregs – Fonds Michel Vallet. By Catherine Vaudour, 2016.

Full colour, 113 pages, in French. Published by Association Tatrit (30 euros)

Both books can be ordered with the Association Tatrit via email: association.tatrit@gmail.com

I purchased both books with the author.

More rare books on personal adornment and cultural history? See my picks for you here, or join the Jewellery List to receive new reviews as they come out!

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References

[1] The Association Tatrit does not have a website yet, but one is in the works. Once it is live, I will add the direct link. In the meantime, learn more about their work here (opens a pdf-file)

The Bedouin Silver blog gives credit where credit is due! Transparent referencing and citing sources helps us all grow. Would you like to do the same and quote this article? Here’s how:

S. van Roode, [write the title as you see it above this post], published on the Bedouin Silver website [paste the exact link to this article], accessed on [the date you are reading this article and decided it was useful for you].

The Bedouin Silver Jewellery Blog: Sigrid van Roode

Sigrid van Roode is an archeologist, ethnographer and jewellery historian. Her main field of expertise is jewellery from North Africa and Southwest Asia, as well as archaeological and archaeological revival jewellery. She has authored several books on jewellery, and obtained her PhD at Leiden University on jewellery, informal ritual and collections. Sigrid has lectured for the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, Turquoise Mountain Jordan, and many others. She provides consultancy and research on jewellery collections for both museums and private collections, teaches courses and curates exhibitions. She is not involved in the business of buying and selling jewellery, and focuses on research, knowledge production, and education only. Sigrid strongly believes in accessibility of knowledge, and aims to provide reliable and trustworthy content: that’s why the Bedouin Silver blog provides references and citations.