Product Description

Antique Lembata Earrings

Material: Silver
Style: Lembata, Indonesia
Size: Height 3.5 cm, Width 2 cm
Order Number: MHSALE1

Lembata is a small island just off the eastern coast east of Flores  in the Lesser Sunda islands,  formerly known as Lomblen island. It is the largest island in a small group, which share a culture known as Lamaholot.

Unique to Lembata these earrings play an important part in marriage exchanges. The granulated ends may represent the grains seen in the head of a ripe rice stalk.

As in many of the arid areas of the Lesser Sundas, the planting of rice is limited and this favoured grain is only eaten on ritual occasions and even then is mixed with maize.

The shape is an elongated  open oval. The symbolic omega open oval form appears in a variety of ornamentation. It goes back to Neolithic Taiwan in about 500 BC in the jade earrings of the Austronesian people and is found throughout Southeast Asia and mirrors the Austronesian diaspora. The greatest variety in form and size are in Indonesia.

The form symbolises the female genitalia which itself symbolises fertility and fecundity.

There are similar examples in Ethnic Jewellery from Indonesia, Continuity and Evolution, Bruce Carpenter, Editions Didier Millet 2011, page 242.

Map of Lembata.

19th – early 20th century.

Please ask for the price (or make an offer).