NORTH INDIA, PROBABLY DELHI, CIRCA 1880

Turquoise was highly esteemed in Indian jewellery, valued both for its distinctive beauty and for the protective and talismanic associations long attributed to the stone. Its popularity in nineteenth-century Indian jewellery is attested by examples illustrated in George Birdwood’s The Industrial Arts of India (1880) and S.S. Jacob and T.H. Hendley’s Jeypore Enamels (1886).

A very closely related necklace in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection, attributed to Northern India, probably Delhi, circa 1880, is particularly relevant (JLY 2098). Carvalho notes that the use of turquoise together with very dark blue enamel on the reverse suggests Delhi as the probable place of production, where turquoise was employed in the local jewellery industry. The combination of turquoise and blue enamel on the present necklace is therefore consistent with this North Indian tradition (P.M. Carvalho, Gems and Jewels of Mughal India: Jewelled and Enamelled Objects from the 16th to the 20th Centuries, The Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, vol. XVIII, London, 2010, no. 48, pp. 121–122).