Product Description

Antique Dayak Earrings

Material: Brass
Style: Dayak, Borneo (Kalimantan), Indonesia
Size: Height 6.5 cm, Width 3 cm
Order Number: MHSADE1

Many Dayak cultures live in Kalimantan. They live in long houses, wear feather headdresses, tattoo their bodies, and wear heavy earrings, which extend their earlobes by four or five inches. Extended earlobes are a sign of beauty.

Big earrings on elongated earlobes were a sign that a woman  was marriageable.

There is a similar pair of earrings in the Collection of the Barbier-Mueller Museum of Geneva shown in Power and Gold, Jewelry from Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, Prestel-Verlag, 1985, page 280 and a photograph from The Sarawak Museum showing a lady with elongated earlobes wearing a pair on page 117.

19th century or early 20th century.

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