The story of Bedouin jewelry is interwoven with that of urban artisans who were responsible for most of the manufacture. The medium of silver had an accepted value; the Austrian Maria Theresa thaler, a coin of pure silver, was the common currency of the Arabian peninsula. It often appears as a decorative feature of the jewelry, much of which was made from the same coin melted down. The religion of Islam restricts the representation of living forms, so the silversmith was challenged to use his artistic talents as well as his technical skill in creating intricate and beautiful designs from a limited palette of geometric forms. Often the women of a tribe would adopt a single design as their trademark, as would urban women of a given area, as customs and rituals common to a culture lend themselves to uniformity of dress and adornment. But even though certain designs can be identified with silversmiths of specific geographical regions, the jewelry traveled the peninsula with its owners and various characteristics intermingled throughout the area. Still we can see that the silver and turquoise of the Nejd, the central plateau of Arabia, is very different from the silver and filigree work of Yemeni craftsmen. The use of gold with the turquoise is also distinctly Nejdi and not copied elsewhere. It is difficult to date the manufacture of the pieces in this collection. The tradition of melting down a woman's jewelry upon her death restricts the number of truly antique items of a hundred years or more. One can only generalize and it is safe to say that very little made before the thirties can be found. Often one can make an educated guess based on the dates of decorative coins, and certainly on the age of coins no longer in use, but fifty or sixty years is probably average. But the true value of the collection lies in its representation of a way of life that has largely vanished. Perhaps ninety percent of the Bedouin tribes that roamed the desert in camel caravans when I went to Arabia are now settled in the cities. Their women are more interested in gold as adornment than in the old silver. They have bank accounts now and are influenced less by tribal tradition than contemporary fashion. The market for the old jewelry no longer exists except for collectors, its manufacture is no longer profitable and like the true Bedouin it has become a rarity. In fact a few years ago Hong Kong began to produce assembly line versions of some of the old designs and ship them to Arabia – a sad sign of the times.
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