I hope your Friday has been a stunning success so far!
I'm sad to say that there were no photos allowed at the King Tut exhibit that I visited last week. The exhibit was crammed full of information and excellent displays of wonderful statues, jewelry, a chair, a bed and more!
I was surprised to see that what the Egyptians termed as earrings would probably challenge even the most callused of folks with large earplug-type earrings! Their earrings were very large cylinders (gold, of course) with gold and gold-chased lapis, carnelian and other gemstones finished with dangles of gold! Those must be quite heavy!! WOW!!!
Another detail that I did not know and chose to weave into finished creation you'll see in a moment is the counter-weight that many of those famous collars had. These were smaller pendants that hung down the back as a literal counter-weight to the heavy front of the collar and so to keep it in place. Here is a good example...
So! On to the creation!
Title: Anubis
Ingredients: Hand-made "Raku" ceramic pendant (Peru), sterling silver, black onyx scarab, lead-free pewter, lead-free dyed leather, metal.
The necklace creation needed to stay clean and relatively unadorned, both to keep the Egyptian styling and so as not to overwhelm the Anubis pendant. Three strands of 1mm leather visually evoke the multi-strand collar and gold and silver-coloured accents lent a flavour of royalty befitting a God. (Egyptians believed that gold was the skin of the Gods and so buried their mummies with gold fingers and toe "caps". The counterweight is a black onyx scarab, a sacred symbol of the sun. (Read more about that here). Anubis, of course, is the God of the Underworld and more specifically, of mummification (Read more about him here.) For whatever reason, I've always found the mythology surrounding him fascinating!
So there you have it.. a little adventure through an Ancient World!
Have a fabulous weekend!!
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