Locket (1700s): Art, History and Details

Locket (1700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This locket may have once been an amulet containing prayers and talismans or a container for perfume or other cosmetic items. At the center, a young woman stands between two groupings of large red flowers. The connections between women and nature have ancient precedents in India, often communicating auspicious fertility. Luxury enamels like this were the hallmark of 18th-century Jaipur goldsmiths and jewelry makers. This locket was given to the museum by the Twentieth Century Club, a women’s community group founded in the early 1900s with satellites across the United States.

Object facts

• Title: Locket
• Date: 1700s
• Culture: Northwestern India, Rajasthan, Rajput Kingdom of Jaipur
• Type: Jewelry
• Technique: gold and enamel
• Dimensions: Case: 3.1 x 3.5 cm (1 1/4 x 1 3/8 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1960.198

A detail from the museum

Green glass, now mostly lost, once filled the lozenge shapes in the woman’s gown.

Collection credit

Gift of the Twentieth Century Club

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “Year in Review | 1960.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 47, no. 10 (1960): 223–254.
• Fyson, Nance Lui. Great Treasures of the World. Basingstoke: The Automobile Association, 1997.

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.