Every once in a while, we might encounter something that doesn’t make any sense. Try as you might, you nevertheless walk away scratching your head thinking, “What the…?” Some things aren’t mysterious or silly, they’re just plain weird.
Th lady on the right has on 44 solid huge gold amulets. Six worn in a headdress, a belt of 9 domes, 6 smaller tdomes behind and a two very huge amulets at the bottom. On the sides of her lower robes are rectangular . Another five solid gold Gau boxes are in front. Probably she could be wearing 20 kilos of gold alone. Tibetans consider it a sacriledge to alloy gold, when gold appears in ornaments it is pure gold. The current price of this 20 kilos of raw gold alone is almost a millions dollars. Of course these ornaments as rare artworks by master goldsmiths are worth much more for the workmanship. The young lady on the right has a belt of 9 gold amulets, and six amulets in her hair. She wears 5 gold and silver Gau amulets in the front of her lower robes, and 4 chain amulets, each consisting 6 parallel silver chains with embossed gold at each end. The enormous coral beads in these ladies necklaces are often worth more than their weight in gold, and the black and white dzi beads between them can be worth tens of thousands of dollars each if they are antique or ancient. these breathtaking costumes are only worn in full about 20 times in the life of the wearer, as they take around two hours to put on with the help of their family, and are incredibly heavy, leading to tiredness and stiff shoulders ===================================================== Ornaments make up most of the life savings of many Khampa families, and so play an important role in Tibetan families' lives as well as in announcing the social status of the wearers. They are saved up for over many years and handed down for centuries from generation to generation within families. Until very recently, these families were nomadic and have to move every few months because of the snowy seasons in the Himalayas, so Khampas have always needed to store their wealth in portable form. So being unable to store wealth in the form of estates or houses or land or in a bank, for millenia wealth has been stored in art, precious fabrics, and particularly into ornaments. Their culture is very conservative about the type of ornaments favored: for thousands of years jewelry made from amber, turquoise and coral have been worn because the stones are believed to hold spiritual power. Gold and silver and also naturally found in Tibet, and the use of these metals by the wealthy also goes back thousands of years. Their ornaments are very chunky, bold and colorful. While the gold earrings that Khampa women wear may have cost them a year or maybe several year's of their salary, ornaments carry so much social status in their society that probably didn't have to think twice about the purchase. To the Khampa people these ornaments have the utmost sentimental value and significance, because they are the physical remnants of generations of their ancestors hard work or success. what these people are wearing is not just their life savings, but also their family history and treasure. this culture has been around for millenia - archeological finds from the 1st century AD in the khampa area unearthed ornaments that are essentially the same in design and materials as today's are. there are also beliefs that the stones provide good luck and protection to disease. dyed red coral is the most sought after stone, but interestingly tibet is very very far from any oceans - all the coral is imported by traders! Religious symbols from Tibetan Buddhism frequency form the designs of pieces, however archeological finds show that the role of ornaments in Tibetan society and peoples' lives long predate the arrival of Buddhism in Tibet. Indeed the beliefs of spiritual protection being provided by coral, amber and turquoise probably originate from the ancient shamanic Bon religion. ANOTHER PHOTO of her is below... (click the thumbnail)
Matthew Sellers is a freelance illustrator and concept artist based in Southern California. Matthew has a passion for the fantasy and sci-fi genre.
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