Earring (New Kingdom, mid- to late Dynasty 18, about 1400–1295 BCE): Artwork and History

Earring (New Kingdom, mid- to late Dynasty 18, about 1400–1295 BCE) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Egyptian.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

This glass earring is half of a pair (with 1894.923) that an Ancient Egyptian craftsman made by first softening blue glass with heat and bending it around a rod. They then fused a twisted cane of white-and-black glass to the main body of the earring. A wire strung through the top would have allowed the wearer to hang this earring from their pierced ear. This particular style was popular during the New Kingdom (about 1550–1069 BCE), when Egyptian men, women, and children of all social classes wore earrings made from glass, precious metals, or stone.

Object facts

• Title: Earring
• Date: New Kingdom, mid- to late Dynasty 18, about 1400–1295 BCE
• Artist attribution: Egyptian
• Place of origin: Egypt
• Medium: Glass
• Dimensions: 2.7 × 2.5 × 0.5 cm (1 1/16 × 1 × 3/16 in.)
• Type: Costume and Accessories
• Department: Arts of Africa
• Reference number: 1894.924

Collection credit

Gift of Henry H. Getty and Charles L. Hutchinson

View the original

Explore the artwork in the Art Institute's collection, including its image and the museum's current catalogue details.

The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.