Wristlet with Knitted Silver Thread Base

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Very rare in its character, like a close-fitted choker with silk base this wrist ornament has been fabricated using sixty isolated units in six rows, each independently cast, interwoven or threaded into a non-metallic base consisting of thickly braided silk yarn and zari-thread, is a light-weight wristlet for a most delicate wrist sensitive to metals or not inclined to hold weighty articles. The jewellery tradition has a number of styles of close-fitted chokers with similar silk-base as has this wristlet. Such styles seem to have been discovered for the reason that the neck, the most delicate part of a woman and the pillar of beauty for it affords beauteous perspectives to both, the face above and the figure below, especially the adjacent breast region, cannot bear a hard metal or the harder stones wrapped direct on it. The dilemma – on one hand the most deserved body part for ornamentation, and on the other, the metals’ or stones’ hardness which cannot be allowed to injuriously wrap around it, is resolved in these styles of chokers : a soft silken inner to cling to the neck affording it silken touch, and a resplendent face on outside to radiate and re-double the beauty of the neck.

This bracelet or wristlet seems to have been conceived and designed for similar considerations as a close-clinging choker for the neck. As delicate as the neck the hand’s primary function is to move and thus every eye is drawn to it and it is often the body’s focal point. Even when idle, it lies around the waist, the body’s centre, and commands by its appearance the appearance of the entire figure; hence it as much deserves to be appropriately adorned as the neck; and, as much delicate as the neck it is as much desirable as in the case of neck that a metal or a stone is not allowed to injure, at least for long, the wrist’s skin by its friction, and a bracelet with the silk base, not just silk lining but a thickly braided support with its own beauty, strength and dimensions, will surely help.

However complex the system of interwoven threads creating the base, in its overall form the bracelet is broadly a highly simplified design. Besides the base of red silk thread that braids of metal wires strengthen, the bracelet consists of sixty equally sized and alike designed units : a five-sided drum-like middle tapering down on both sides into pointed ends. These units, arranged in six rows of ten each, are entwined with the base with concealed metal-wires. Obviously machine cast, these drums’ like shaped units, so arranged that their middle part in one row is contrasted by their pointed narrow part, in the other row, create rhythm and great visual effect. The silk-zari mixed base terminates on one end with a water-melon like looking large silver bead attached to it, and on the other, into the form of a ring, obviously to hold the silver bead to lock the two ends around the wrist.

This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr. Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of literature and is the author of numerous books on Indian art and culture. Dr. Daljeet is the curator of the Miniature Painting Gallery, National Museum, New Delhi. They have both collaborated together on a number of books. .