The exhibition A Fine Possession: Jewellery and Identity (24 September 2014 – 20 September 2015), currently showing at the Museum, is a wonderful opportunity to showcase our previously unseen Asian jewellerry.

The Museum holds 170 Japanese combs and hairpins from the Edo (1603-1868) and Meiji (1868-1912) periods, nearly 400 Chinese and Japanese belt toggles, and a group of Chinese jade hairpins and belt hooks from the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). The Museum’s Asian jewellery collection also includes Chinese kingfisher-feather inlaid hair ornaments, Miao silver alloy jewellery, Chinese Mandarin beads and hat finials, an Indonesian man’s ceremonial headpiece and Malaysian belt buckles or pendings.

Asian jewellery has rarely been the focus of museum collections in Australia, however, this Museum has a unique and diverse Asian jewellery collection.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, jewellery is defined as ‘personal ornaments, such as necklaces, rings, or bracelets that are typically made from or contain jewels and precious metal’. However, in the Asian context, jewellery can be more broadly understood. Whereas in Europe and many parts of the world, beautifying or adorning the body generally involves decorating bare skin such as the neck, wrist and fingers. In Asia, particularly East Asia jewellery seems to have developed differently. Many items of jewellery evolved from being abstract talismanic items of personal adornment to being functional aspects of dress.  Some of the earliest known items include belt hooks, hairpins and earrings, as well as mirrors which had a role in adornment as reflectors of beauty and as objects worn or carried on the person. Social standing, personal taste and the availability of raw materials determined design and materials. For thousands of years, different items matured at different times, and to some degree their evolution was never complete, as objects continued to convey meaning even when they served a functional role.

Asia is a particularly culturally diverse region and expressions of identity cover a very broad spectrum. Different materials are considered as ‘precious’by different cultures. For example, the Chinese have favoured jade since ancient times and valued it more highly than precious metals such as gold. Jade was so highly valued that it was equated in importance with the king. The character for ‘king (王 )’ in Chinese originated from the form of a string of jade beads and the character for ‘jade (玉)’is almost identical except for the additional dot. Chinese artisans developed highly sophisticated techniques for carving jade; some examples shown here are a belt hook and a hairpin. In the first century CE, Xu Shen described jade as follows in his book Discussion of writing and explanations of character:

Jade is the fairest of stones.
It is endowed with five virtues.
Charity is its lustre, bright yet warm;
Rectitude is its translucency, revealing the colour and markings within;
Wisdom is its pure and penetrating note when struck.
It is courage, for it can be broken but does not bend;
Equity is its sharp edges which injure none.

Another distinctive feature in East Asia is that hair ornaments such as combs and hairpins are among the most popular forms of jewellery. This is probably due to the nature of Asian dress, in particular for the Chinese and Japanese, who tend not to reveal much skin, while their striking jet-black Asian hair offers a background against which such jewels shine.

The Chinese adored hair ornaments made from kingfisher feathers with their gloriously iridescent ultramarine to turquoise-blue hues. Kingfisher feathers were first featured in ornaments as early as the Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) and, over time, Chinese artisans developed sophisticated techniques to create from them a variety of dress embellishments and accessories. Kingfisher feather jewellery was very highly valued and denoted status, wealth and royalty.

In the case of Japan, rings, necklaces and earrings had little or no place on the already elaborate traditional Japanese dress; as a result, lacquer combs (kushi) and hairpins (kanzashi) would have been the only additional embellishment. Yet these hair ornaments were a vital part of Japanese fashion as they expressed a women’s character, social class and religion. There is an ancient Japanese proverb that clearly demonstrates the importance of these hair ornaments, ‘A woman’s hair is her life’.

The Asian jewellery collection at the Museum continues to grow and reflect contemporary society. Their designs and materials have expanded to cover a much broader spectrum with diverse meanings. For example, a set of hairpins in the above image, made by Rui Kikuchi (b.1892), was made of discarded PET bottles and the design is a result of an unusual but highly successful combination of kirigami, the traditional Japanese paper-cutting technique that relies on a repetitive pattern made by folding and cutting paper. Kikuchi hopes to communicate though her works that people can recognize beauty within mundane objects.

Written by Min-Jung Kim, Curator