Earring

Description Annular earring with three pendants of plaited chains to each of which is attached a croix patee of hollow gold, the front ornamented with repousse featherings and a central cell holding green vitreous paste; below each cross is suspended an amethyst drop. One cross and one amethyst may be restorations. Hoop earrings with suspended gemstones were worn by women throughout the Byzantine Empire. This unusually fine example has woven "loop-in-loop" chains linked to small gold crosses, indicating that it was made for a Christian woman.

Conservation

Date	Description	Narrative
5/22/1984	Treatment	cleaned

Exhibitions

• Early Christian and Byzantine Art. Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore. 1947.
• Exhibition of Gold. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland. 1947-1948.
• Jewelry - Ancient to Modern. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. 1979-1980.
• Objects of Adornment: Five Thousand Years of Jewelry from the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio; Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa; Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis; Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo; The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota. 1984-1987.
• Jewelry from the Walters Art Gallery and the Zucker Family Collection. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore. 1987.

Provenance Amin Khawam, Cairo, by purchase; Dikran Kelekian, New York and Paris, by purchase; Henry Walters, New York [date of acquisition unknown], by purchase; Sadie Jones (Mrs. Henry Walters), New York, 1931, by inheritance; Sale, Parke-Bernet, New York, November 30, 1943, no. 519; Walters Art Museum, 1943, by purchase.

Credit Museum purchase with funds provided by the S. & A.P. Fund [formerly part of the Walters Collection], 1943