This tag was created by Junyi Wu.
Necklace (1925.522)
Junyi Wu, College of the Holy Cross, Class of 2026
The necklace could easily be cradled in one hand, but it suggests journeys across hundreds of miles of land and sea. The necklace was made with precious sapphires, emeralds, and gold which were mined in and carried extracted from places ranging from Egypt, to India, and to Sri Lanka. Gems and unworked gold were carried to the Byzantine island of Cyprus, located in the eastern side of Mediterranean Sea, north of Egypt, south of Turkey, and west of Lebanon and Syria. These raw materials were then put into the hands of unknown Byzantine craftsmen living on the island of Cyprus, who created the necklace before us. We know neither the identity of the craftsman nor the identity of the woman (or, likely, women) who owned and wore this necklace, but the craftsman would have left traces of their techniques on the necklace and the woman would have been wealthy and well-dressed. Indeed, Byzantine women, like the gems and gold they wore, sometimes traveled far from home. This lightweight but exquisite necklace would have made the perfect traveling companion, perhaps crossing again some of the lands and seas originally traversed by its raw materials. And the portable nature of this necklace hints at the mobility and further traveling of this necklace as it went from one owner to another.
