Uzbek Tribal Silver. The above completely handcrafted Silver dome-shaped pendant, with inlaid Turquoise and nine finely connected gemstone Coral pendulums, is quite old, has seen a good bit of wearing but is in excellent condition, all the inlaid Turquoise still in place and all the Coral drops intact. It would have been crafted some three-quarters of a century ago, to be used as a head-scarf hanging adornment, and would always have been a treasured piece.
Uzbekistan shares a long land border with Turkmenistan, another of the “stans” of Central Asia, and while the two neighbours have strong jewellery cultures, they are in large part quite different, the Turkmeni jewellery tending stylistically towards a spare, almost linear line where Carnelian is the predominate gemstone used, while Uzbeki jewellery tends more towards a fluid, somewhat more ornate style influenced by its eastern neighbours, in particular China, and liberally uses Coral and Pearl and Turquoise gemstones, Carnelian rarely.
The old Silver double-S connection between the Uzbek Tribal Silver pendant and the new Silver chain is from Rajasthan; the Turquoise tubes securely integrated into the chain at the connecting link have their origin in the same basic region of Uzbekistan, coming from the west of what was Greater Khorasan, or later, Transoxiana, which included Afghanistan, western Persia and much of Central Asia, including Uzbekistan.