AN IMPORTANT SET OF GOLDEN HORDE TURQUOISE INSET GOLD JEWELLERY, CENTRAL ASIA, 14th CENTURY

consisting of two earrings, a pendant, two triangular ornaments and a hexagonal ornament formed of ten lozenge and four triangular panels, each of box construction, delicately worked in filigree with scrolling motifs and rosettes around enclosures for turquoise cabochons, the earrings with granulated decoration above a raised rosette, the reverse of each either with attachment  loops, or in the smaller panels, with holes for stitching, fitted case

The above pieces are exquisite examples of the jewellery of the Golden Horde; Mongols who under the leadership of Genghis Khan's son Juchi established their centre of power in the lower Volga and Crimea in the second half of the thirteenth century.

The Treasure of Niezatski, a collection of jewellery recovered in the Crimea, contains several comparative pieces dating from the same era, displaying identical box construction (see Kramarovsky, M.G. "Niezatski Treasure: Crimea and Asia Minor in the 14th Century, Bizantiya I blizxhni Vostok Gosudarstvennugo Ermitazha, XLVII, St Petersburg, 1994), but our example bears greater resemblance to a gold pendant in the Hermitage Museum (inv. no. SA-8091; Masterpieces of Art in the Hermitage Museum, exhibition held in the Dar Al-Athar al Islamaiyyah, Kuwait, 1990, no.48). The pendant in the Hermitage has the same box construction, cabochon stones, foliate form and the same combination of filigree and granulation.