Nose Ring, Bulak
20th century (made)
| Place of origin |
A gold ring with a pendant crescent fringed with dangling seed pearls. The ring, which passes through the wearer's septum is made of gold wire one end beaten flat and rolled over to make a cylinder into which the other end can be slotted to make a fastening. The ring is wrapped with gold wire coiled around it with a compressed meander in the middle section on each side with two granulated rings flanking a polygonal-sided gold bead with a granulated finial and a rosette, with remnants of a red pigment also seen on some of the adjacent granules, soldered on the front. Below this there is a green glass stone set in lac with an oval bezel mount surrounded with diamond-cut granules. This sits above the openwork crescent filled with a framework of lozenge-shaped bezels and granulation onto which are soldered a row of whorls of gold wire encircling diamond-cut gold granules. The linear outline of the crescent is decorated with beaded wire. The lower edge of the crescent has a row of rings made from wire and decorated with smaller diamond-cut granules through which are twisted fines gold wires. These wires have ends coiled back round themselves with the other ends threaded with seed pearls, each finished with a granule and a die-stamped beaded ring.
Object details
| Category | |
| Object type | |
| Materials and techniques | Gold, lac, pearls, glass. Wirework and diamond-cut granulation |
| Brief description | Gold nose ring, bulak, from Lucknow |
| Physical description | A gold ring with a pendant crescent fringed with dangling seed pearls. The ring, which passes through the wearer's septum is made of gold wire one end beaten flat and rolled over to make a cylinder into which the other end can be slotted to make a fastening. The ring is wrapped with gold wire coiled around it with a compressed meander in the middle section on each side with two granulated rings flanking a polygonal-sided gold bead with a granulated finial and a rosette, with remnants of a red pigment also seen on some of the adjacent granules, soldered on the front. Below this there is a green glass stone set in lac with an oval bezel mount surrounded with diamond-cut granules. This sits above the openwork crescent filled with a framework of lozenge-shaped bezels and granulation onto which are soldered a row of whorls of gold wire encircling diamond-cut gold granules. The linear outline of the crescent is decorated with beaded wire. The lower edge of the crescent has a row of rings made from wire and decorated with smaller diamond-cut granules through which are twisted fines gold wires. These wires have ends coiled back round themselves with the other ends threaded with seed pearls, each finished with a granule and a die-stamped beaded ring. |
| Dimensions |
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| Credit line | Given by Dr W. Ganguly |
| Object history | This nose ring is part of the large donation of Indian folk jewellery from Dr Waltraud Ganguly which was collected over the last few decades before her death in 2015 from dealers in both India and Europe, in parallel with extensive fieldwork she carried out in the Indian Sub-Continent. She purchased this nose ring from a dealer, Mahendra, in Delhi in April 2009 for 550 Euros. |
| Historical context | Bulaks of this form were worn in their septums by women in Himachal Pradesh, although they would appear to have been manufactured in the district of Lucknow owing to the technique of manually chiselling the granules, according to Dr Ganguly. |
| Bibliographic references |
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| Collection | |
| Accession number | IS.108-2019 |
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| Record created | April 29, 2015 |
| Record URL |
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