Neila Sathyalingam. Marriage pic circa 1957.
Sometime back I had a request on post Independence jewellery in India. Which it turns out isn’t all that easy, especially if you look at it region wise! A lot of pieces are of course classics that get tweaked and reinvented with each decade. I will try and post the few images I have on me over time.
Today’s pic is very much 1950s and very much Tamil with its jimki (jhumka), mookuthi (nose ring) and addigai (the choker kind of neckpiece). I got a couple of names for the other neckpiece but I wasn’t very convinced they were correct. Suffice it to say that multiple strands of sengili (chain) with a padakkam (pendant) were (and are) quite common. In this particular piece the chain is artfully combined with 3 pendants, usually you would see a single pendant. The lower larger pendants are possibly joined by the kind of motifs that are common in India, e.g. peacocks, swans etc.