Vintage Uzbek Hoop Earrings. Bukhari Silver and Pearl Earrings. 0323

These are exquisite romantic beauties are made by Uzbek Bukhari artisans of Central Asia.

They are made of sterling silver with pearl, turquoise and glass beads. About 3.5 inches long and 28g.

There is a rich Bukhara tradition of jewelry.
For people throughout Central Asia, jewelry has held tremendous symbolic and spiritual value across centuries. Such jewelry served a variety of functions for those who wore it-anything from signaling power to expressing spiritual belief to marking major life events.
Traditional adornments were prized primarily for their spiritual value and played a major role in rites of passage such as weddings, where brides donned heavy sets weighing upwards of 30 pounds to ensure future health and fertility and to protect against evil spirits. For women, jewelry signified marital status, social status, and ethnic and tribal identity at every stage of life. From a young age, girls wore small bracelets and earrings, scaling up to greater quantities of more elaborate jewelry as they emerged into adolescence and young motherhood. Around the age of 30, they would reverse this process, wearing fewer and more modest adornments as they entered their 40s and beyond, passing their more ornate pieces to their daughters, and so on.
Silver, most closely associated with the moon and femininity among the region's ethnic tribes, was traditionally prized for its cleansing and powers and thought to maintain purity of the hands
The region's tribal communities long believed that any opening in the human body could serve as a pathway in for evil spirits-and so they historically have protected the ears and nostrils with ornamental rings. Earrings were always created and worn in pairs, the right representing the male and the left the female. Popular belief held that if a woman were to lose one of her earrings, she ran the risk of losing her husband-and jewelers were cautioned to never recreate a single earring to replace one that had been lost, or he would be in danger of losing his own wife.

-from Arts Institute of Chicago

For more great tribal and mineral earrings check out the earring section of our shop.