Exceptional Mongolian Married Woman’s Silver & Coral Headdress Ornaments or Temporals

This spectacular, heirloom pair of heavy silver ornaments set with massive coral cabochons, was designed to be worn suspended from an elaborate headdress down each side of the head, as if earrings, but actually worn as temporals. Of silver and silver filigree, they are inset with some of the largest natural coral cabochons we have seen on Mongolian jewellery.

Such jewellery was worn by aristocratic Mongolian married women as a particularly ostentatious display of wealth, prestige and power. The value was in the coral and given the size of the coral in this pair, the set belonged to a particularly wealthy family of the Chahar Mongols, probably in Efu Khalkar, in Inner Central Mongolia. Mediterranean coral (corallium rubrum) was the most sought after coral and was traded into the region via India.

Each of the pair comprises a small loop at the top to allow the ornaments to be suspended from the headdress, plus a large silver wire hook on the reverse to allow the weight of the ornament to be supported. The top element comprises a silver and silver wire plaque inset with a large pear-shaped coral cabochon. Suspended from this is a small cloud-like silver dangle which sits in between this and the next element. The next element down is set with a crescent-shaped coral cabochon set in silver. Next is a half-cylinder of coral set in silver, silver filigree and pearled silver wire edging. Then comes the main element with a massive half sphere ot coral set in a silver plaque decorated with silver filigree and with a lower element of flattened silver wires and granulation work arrayed as lush, leafy scrollwork. From this are three pendants chains of four coral beads of differing shapes and sizes, separated by silver filigree spacers and beads and terminating with silver roundels decorated with filigree and in flat wires, stylised flower/butterfly motifs.

The pair here are comparable to pieces in the National Museum of Denmark which holds one of the world’s most important collections of Mongolian jewellery, collected in 1937-37 and 1938-39 by Henning Haslund-Christensen during his expeditions to Mongolia and Central Asia.

The pair here is in excellent condition, is of the highest quality, and are among the finest examples of such ornaments.