Nepalese Gem-Inset Gilded Silver Breast Plate (Suta or Konchi)

This fine Nepalese breast plate is from the Newar people of the Kathmandu Valley and would have been worn for ritual and ceremonial occasions. Of crescent form, it is of gilded silver decorated with embossed panels; ample, dense applied gilded silver filigree; and a mixture of semi-precious stones, roundels of mother-of-pearl, and foil-backed glass, all impressed into red resin within high box settings.

The central motif is a protective  kala mask with two hands that appear to hold strings of jewels.

The plate is edged with a border of a row of green turquoise cabochons and a row of blue and red stone cabochons.

Among the stones used are garnets, turquoise chips and hyalite, which is a water-clear version of opal but which looks like unusually glassy rock crystal but which fluoresces bright green under ultra-violet light. The main source of hyalite for the Nepal most probably was Afghanistan via old trading routes.

The plate would have been suspension from a chain and two loops at the top allow for such suspension.

The breastplate might have been worn as a pectoral or pendant in its own right, or could have been attached from a crown and worn as a breast plate perhaps for use by a member of the Rana aristocracy.

See Gabriel (1999, p. 24) for a related breastplate attributed to the late 18th century, and Clarke (2004, p. 59) for a breastplate worn suspended from a crown, attributed to the 18th or 19th centuries.

Undoubtedly some stones are replacements given that the traditional technique in Nepal of mounting stones was simply to press them into resin, leading to later losses and necessary replacements. Any such losses are typical.