Jewellery conference

Visible Beauty, Hidden Meaning

Published on August 05, 2024

What do you do to celebrate your PhD? Throw a party of jewellery talks! I hosted the symposium Visible Beauty, Hidden Meanings in June 2024, bringing together artists, historians, makers, archaeologists and wearers, to discuss personal adornment in the widest sense of the world and from multiple angles. The room in the National Museum of Antiquities was packed with a curious and engaged audience, and well, what can I say: this afternoon was some serious fun!

Visible Beauty, Hidden Meanings: the title

First, why this title? ‘Hidden Meanings’ does not refer to sensational secret codes (hope you were not expecting that), but to the many meanings a piece of jewellery can have. And those meanings are not always straightforward, especially when the observer is from another culture, or from another timeframe, or both.

Speaking for myself, my grandmother could read and explain details in the traditional jewellery of her region that I do not even spot unless they are pointed out to me. Same culture, but different timeframe.

Imagine doing that as an archaeologist, looking at jewellery of thousands of years ago: different culture, different timeframe – and no one to ask!

On top of that, our various disciplines and cultural backgrounds result in us looking at jewellery and adornment differently, too. A maker will spot technical details sooner, a wearer will see what does and does not work, a historian traces shapes and symbols to a wider context.

‘Meaning’ may simply be hidden to us, because we may see a lot of adornment, but we don’t know what to look for.

So, what I wanted to do on this afternoon, is bring together experts from a variety of fields to look at adornment together, share their way of seeing and engaging with adornment, and learn from each other’s viewpoints. A wonderful aspect in that respect was that none of us is only just one thing: you can be an archaeologist, a wearer, a maker and a practitioner all one, or a maker, wearer and researcher. Just like jewellery, people carry multiple perspectives, too, and that is what made this afternoon of cross-overs so inspiring.

Living Adornment

Salma Ahmad Caller opened the symposium with a thought-provoking talk on jewellery and our imagination. What does it mean to adorn oneself? Using adornment as classification tool for ‘Peoples & Types’ heavily relies on only sight as medium, practiced by external observers, and limiting our understanding – but adornment also has profound bodily aspects as well, known only to the wearer. Supported by Salma’s beautiful art works, this talk was a fantastic opening not just of the symposium, but of our minds.

Fatima Oulad Thami took us through Moroccan henna as living, changing heritage. She shared her own experiences as both a henna wearer and henna artist with us, as well as her journey into history and research of this art form. Fatima explained how henna as colorant is used not just for skin or hair, but also on fabrics, connecting the body to things through similar treatment. She also highlighted the bodily sensations of henna, such as its scent, and its capacity of cooling the skin, and its powerful presence in a number of social contexts such as weddings and festivities, and informal rituals.

Fatima explored henna as living heritage through changing patterns, changing modes of application, and a changing clientele. As henna traditions are mainly oral, and not written down in pattern books for example, there is much that may be lost in the near future, and I think we all felt the importance of Fatima’s work.

Wafa Ghnaim tuned in from New York to share her latest research into Palestinian dress, with a focus on headdresses. Wafa learned to embroider from her mother at a very young age, and has since combined her ancestral art with education, research and activism – if ever you’d need a clear example of the profound meaning traditional adornment has in today’s world, Palestinian tatreez is it.

Wafa showed us how adornment expresses identity on so many levels: of a people and culture as a whole, of a region in particular, and finally, the hardest level of identity to trace but the most powerful of them all, that of the person who made and wore an item of dress.

Adornment outside its living context

These first three talks set the scene for the length and width of jewellery and adornment as experienced by living cultures. For archaeologists and jewellery historians, this overview is a bit daunting, as we’re left with only the material remains of a society. We simply have no idea of any of the kind of traditions, customs, habits, and ‘ways of doing things’ a living culture has. But as the next three speakers showed, there is still a lot to be learned.

Karsten Wentink took us back to prehistory with his research into the earliest gold ornaments from The Netherlands. These are mysterious things: beautiful, but we have absolutely no idea how they were worn. By comparing similar items from other parts of Europe, and asking a skilled goldsmith to study the technical details, we may get an idea of how these things were handled in the past. And what is more, these objects were decorated, which led to a lively exchange of thoughts with Fatima on the importance and meaning of patterns on both skin and things.

Yvonne Lammers addressed one of the most difficult aspects of the past to grasp: spirituality and ritual. She drew fascinating parallels between the grave of a richly adorned woman from medieval Fyrkat, Sweden, and wicca practices of her own experience. She based her argument on analysis of the items found with the woman, including hallucinatory aspects of organic materials, contemporary tales of magic and witchcraft, and sensory elements. Here, we looked back at Salma’s talk again: dare we use our imagination and acknowledge this woman as a seeress?

Kim van Zweeden then showed us sentimental and mourning jewellery from the relatively recent past, the 19^th and 19^th centuries. Here as well, we need to understand the cultural context to get an idea of what all these skulls and fascination with death actually meant. Adornment can be a powerful way to connect with loved ones, either living or dead, and we lingered a while on the intimacy of using another person’s hair in ornaments worn on the body, a topic Jolanda reflected on with her research in dressing the hair of the dead in ancient Egypt.

A caleidoscope of adornment studies

Jolanda Bos wrapped all previous topics up in her talk on the sensory aspects of personal adornment. She whisked us through time, from the ancient world to contemporary practices, and showed us how hairstyle, dress and jewellery all work together. For this, she shared many examples from her research on kohl containers from both ancient Egypt and the modern world, face veils, and hairstyles from Amarna.

Here, we touched on perceptions as well as sensations. Perceptions, as Western Egyptologists have long struggled with the concept of greasing one’s hair (even with delightfully perfumed wax), while this makes total sense to people used to caring for African hair. And sensations, in the smell, weight and sounds of face veils, which Jolanda is also working on. A beautiful final talk to conclude an afternoon of adornment studies!

To support the talks, each speaker also brought objects from their own research for the audience to see, touch, smell, and ask about. Jolanda, for example, brought kohl containers and face veils, of which one still retained some of its smell. A fascinating sensation to breathe in the same fragrance as the wearer once did! Fatima recreated a wedding henna set-up with a sugar cone, henna leaves and a bracelet placed atop the cone, Karsten had recreated some of the prehistoric ornaments for us to try, and Yvonne brought replicas of the Fyrkat seeress’ outfit.

This ‘table of things’ formed a perfect medium for our audience to share their thoughts, ask questions and follow up with the speakers during the break and after the last talk.

Visible Beauty, Hidden Meanings: new beginnings

What happens when a henna artist, an archaeologist and a witch walk into a bar…? That is what we did afterwards: get a drink and a bite to eat, and reflect on the afternoon. Turns out, we all loved to hear other perspectives, but also to recognize elements of our own field of study in that of someone else.

For me personally, that flow of recognition was the best part of the entire afternoon: we may all be working with totally different objects in completely different contexts, but by using our collective imagination and inspired by the results and viewpoints of others, new things emerge. This symposium was just too good to leave it at a one-time event: I’ll be definitely organizing more of these in future, so stay tuned and watch this space!

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