Bird Pendant (900–1550): Art, History and Details

Bird Pendant (900–1550) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Tairona-style pendants are among the most spectacular of all ancient American gold ornaments, in part because of the detail achieved with lost-wax casting. The traits of the figure pendant include a lower lip ornament and a headdress in which two bats hang upside down. Although called caciques (chieftains), that is, ruler portraits, the meaning of such figures is not well understood. Bird imagery was important in the isthmian region in ancient times and remains so today. For instance, among the modern Bribri of Costa Rica, the principal creator deity (Sibo) takes the form of a buzzard or kite who wears a collar. Collars are standard features of ancient bird pendants, like the one shown here.

Object facts

• Title: Bird Pendant
• Date: 900–1550
• Culture: Colombia, Tairona
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: cast gold
• Dimensions: Overall: 8.1 x 6.3 x 3.6 cm (3 3/16 x 2 1/2 x 1 7/16 in.)
• Collection: AA - Intermediate Region
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 1965.466

Collection credit

In memory of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Humphreys, gift of their daughter Helen

Further reading listed by the museum

• Stechow, Wolfgang. "Cleveland's Golden Anniversary Acquisitions." Artnews 65, no. 5 (September 1966): 30-64.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.