Daggers, 19th century.
Antiquity and the Middle Ages
The Bactrian goldsmith-jewellers excelled in the art of embedding turquoise and almandite and knew how to treat and shape metal in different ways: casting, engraving, filigreeing, milling. The jewels of antiquity reflect the style, common in art, which goes back to the traditions of Persia, Greece, India, and the Oriental steppes. After close observation of the sculptures and wall-paintings of palaces and temples in Central Asia, one can appreciate the jewellery of the end of antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages (3rd-8th centuries): necklaces, bracelets, belt-buckles, rings, and earrings. Besides gold jewellery, useful objects were made out of copper and bronze throughout this period: brooches, amulets, clothing elements, and belts adorned with representations of human beings, birds, and animals.
The art of the goldsmith from the 9th through the 13th centuries undergoes all of the same style changes previously experienced by the other crafts. The pieces of work are provided with Arab inscriptions framing zoomorphic subjects included in round medallions, made either in relief or with openwork.
The clothing elements cast in silver, bronze, and copper are quite predominant: brooches, belt trimmings, ornamental plaques, amulets, and fasteners representing animals. The chronicles and poetic works of this period contain many descriptions of this jewellery and luxury goods made of gold and silver with an astonishing abundance of gems adorning them: diamonds, rubies, emeralds, turquoises, pearls. These stones will still be valued in the jewellery of the following centuries (14th-16th centuries), as the search for a certain refinement of shape, decoration, and techniques of jewellery leads to more and more diversity.
Modern times
The miniatures of the 16th and 17th centuries show us jewellery of which the style will be perpetuated until the beginning of the 20th century.
The art of the goldsmith of this last period is apparent in all its ethnographic multiplicity, with great diversity of shape, material, technical procedures, and types of objects. One can appreciate the craft of the goldsmiths by observing the sheaths of sabres, the hilts of daggers with refined filigree patterns, the plates of harnesses, and gilded silver adorning the belts with embedded precious stones. But the goldsmiths of those days were essentially occupied with jewellery for women. All the events in the life of women of Central Asia, from their youth until old age, are reflected in the nature and quality of the jewellery they possessed. Some of them were wedding presents and were worn only during feast days, quite different from what one would wear every day; but other gradations also existed and were linked with social status, age, etc. Parents gave their daughters, aged from three to seven years old, silver earrings and bracelets, and coral jewellery of little value. On the other hand, jewellery given to a fiancée showed great diversity. Mothers passed on family jewels to their daughters, but usually the fiancé ordered engagement jewellery from a goldsmith and offered it to his future wife in his first visits. This jewellery formed a rich unity, harmoniously completing the ample dresses with bright colours magnificently embroidered by skilled hands. The jewellery adorned the head, the forehead, the temples, the ears, the plaits, the neck, chest, shoulders, wrists, and fingers. During wedding and feast days, girls and young women would wear all the jewellery in their possession.
The large-sized jewellery was generally made of silver (sometimes of gilded silver); the earrings, rings, and bracelets, however, were made of gold. The goldsmiths used almost every known procedure for the shaping of the metal: forging, casting, stamping, engraving, chasing, filigreeing. Moreover, the objects were adorned with gilt and niello, and coloured stones were embedded in them. The goldsmiths from Uzbekistan (zargar) and Tajikistan generously adorned their pieces of work with semiprecious stones. The pieces of lesser value were embellished with glass jewellery, sequins, and coral.
Schools of the goldsmith’s trade
In the 19th century, several schools of the goldsmith’s trade opened in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan: Bukhara, Samarkand, Shahrisabz, Khiva, Tashkent, Kokand, Khujant, Marghilan, Oura-Tube, and Ach were the main centres. These schools were specialised in the manufacturing of jewellery. The tiara of gilded silver adorned with turquoises and gems, represented the principal piece of women’s jewellery. The tiara was made from a plate in the shape of an arc of a circle decorated with symmetrical openwork composed of a network of intertwined shanks on which stones and pearls were set; it was worn with inlaid polychrome stones. At late 19th to early 20th century, a profusion of embedded stones, a complexity of lines and a certain eclecticism of style, can be noticed in the goldsmith trade. In Turkestan, this coincides with the appearance of Russian and Tartarian pieces of jewellery, which the local craftsmen imitated to satisfy the taste of a rich clientele.