NORTH WEST INDIA, 19TH CENTURY

This bracelet, and those of the following two lots are of a type also known as guard bangles (khatria) - designed to be worn at either end of a number of smaller, more richly decorated bracelets on the forearm. A comparable pair is published in Oppi Untracht, Traditional Jewelry of India, Hong Kong, 1997, no.354, p.186. The materials chosen for the bangles would have been demonstrative of the social rank and status of the owner. The rarer the jewels and the more enamels and precious metals used, the richer the client.