 Hi everyone and welcome to Barnes Takeout, your daily serving of art. My name is Carl Walsh. I'm a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Research, Interpretation and Education here at the Barnes and today we go up to Room 16, which is a room that we've been looking at a lot recently for our takeouts and we're going to be having a look at a small Navajo necklace, which is in this cabinet here. And if we just zoom in a little bit, we've seen this cabinet a couple of times now and it features a lot of different objects from around the world and from different cultures and a lot of these objects are sacred or votive or magically kind of protective pieces of art from various different cultures and different periods. And the Navajo necklace that we're looking at today is this one here right on the top of the cabinet shelf here. And this necklace is interesting because it forms part of a row of similarly designed necklaces that all feature these big crescent pendants and they have different kind of shaped smaller turquoise pendants that hang in the middle of them. And these are kind of interesting from the point of view of the ensemble because these different kind of curvilinear designs and geometric shapes are reflected in a lot of the other objects which we have in this case. So for example, the triangular pendant of our necklace kind of communicates to things like the triangular shape of the crowns of these Egyptian statues. We can also kind of find it in the legs and the faces of these bronze Greek geometric bowls and horses. And they are also kind of interesting because they work in a similar way to the metal fixtures which are in the larger ensemble. And so we have these pieces up here on the wall which also feature kind of triangular designs and lots of kind of curvilinear lines and things as well. And these are also reflected in a lot of the paintings that we have in the ensemble too. So it's kind of interesting to think about how they fit into this larger picture and how they kind of replicate smaller kind of metal fixtures within the cabinet that we have mirrored up on the wall. And it's interesting how Barnes decided to kind of display these in this way. But if we zoom into our necklace, so here it is, you can see that it consists of a string of alternating bead types. We've got these nice kind of simple round silver beads and then we've got these more elaborate beads that are actually shaped into the form of flaring flowers. And these are usually termed as squash blossoms from which this necklace gets its name. And we'll come back to that in a second. And then at the bottom we also have this crescent motif, this double crescent, which is called a naja in Navajo, which just means crescent. And the crescent is kind of terminated in these small turquoise insets. We just zoom in a little bit better to show you. So we have these small turquoise insets on the terminal ends of the crescents. And then we have this hanging pendant, which is triangular in shape. And you can see that all the turquoise insets have these small drill holes in them. And that's probably indicating that these pieces of stone were reused from an earlier piece of jewelry. Some earrings or a string of turquoise beads for a necklace or a bracelet of some kind. So probably reused from an earlier piece of jewelry. Now the origins of the motifs that we're seeing here, so these squash blossoms and this crescent design, are quite heavily debated by scholars. And even amongst the Navajo themselves today, it's not quite agreed about what they mean and ideas about where they come from and what they mean vary between different scholars and between different Navajo groups. So these squash blossoms have been suggested to actually, first of all, they don't quite look like squash blossoms. But they've been suggested to be potentially adapted from Spanish motifs of a pomegranate, which were found a lot on Spanish buttons, particularly on Spanish kind of military uniforms and as a motif on Spanish textiles, which are something that the Navajo might have seen when they came into contact with Spanish missionaries and Spanish troops who came into the area of New Mexico from kind of the 1600s onwards. And some have also suggested that maybe they are kind of indigenous symbols or motifs that have their origins amongst the Navajo. And even some people suggested that maybe they come from other Native American groups from plain societies instead. So very kind of heavily debated about what these are and where they came from. And we have a similar kind of issue around this double crescent motif. This is something that we kind of commonly find on horse bridles, on Spanish moorish horse bridles with a crescent that kind of sits on the forehead of the bridle on the horse's head. And this has also been suggested maybe to have come from originating from Spanish motifs that were adapted by the Navajo. But still very, very unclear on where they come from. But it's a kind of interesting issue of kind of cross-cultural, artistic transmission and interaction. Now, these types of necklaces in general are symbols of status and wealth within Navajo societies and with a preference, definitely, I think, for the bigger kind of chunkier necklaces being kind of more prestigious. And the imagery and the materials that are used in them lean to different potential meanings and functions between different Navajo communities. So while silver is a locally available resource, it wasn't something that was actually particularly used much in Navajo jewelry making till the introduction of silver coinage from trading with American, Mexican and Spanish markets, particularly in the late 1800s. And Navajo silversmiths often source silver from this silver coinage, which they were acquiring from these markets. And they would melt down the coins and shape them into jewelry through handmade techniques of just hammering and soldering. And if we look closely at our necklace again, you can actually see that while these beads look very uniform, there's actually a lot of variation in their shape. They all kind of look a little bit different. They all have slightly different ways that they reflect light, which kind of indicate and illustrate to us that they're all handmade and kind of made individually rather than being casted. So the silver in this necklace is probably also sourced from silver coinage. And it's interesting to think about how the value and the prestige of this item was kind of heightened through using coinage in its making. And while silver is a relatively new material that's used in Navajo jewelry making, turquoise has been long used in Navajo decorative arts. It's a sacred material that's very important in Navajo material culture. It was believed to bring good fortune and to ward off evil forces through its kind of bright green blue coloration, which we can see really nicely in these little insets. But it also came from Mother Earth. So it has this important kind of protective quality and life-giving quality to it. And for some Navajo, the motif that we're seeing here of this turquoise pendant hanging and framed in between this silver crescent is actually kind of symbolic of a child within a womb as well. So it has this inherent kind of connection to motherhood and to protection as well, magical protection, which some Navajo kind of think that this is primarily used for this motif. And in general, wearing turquoise is something really important in expressing Navajo identity and being seen part of the Navajo community. So it's really kind of an important material to them as well. And we've kind of seen through looking at this object that this necklace has a number of different ways of viewing it. It's something of value because of the materials that it's made of that could be traded. It's a symbol of status and wealth within Navajo society. And it can also be something that was very personal and was worn by someone who believed it brought them protection and good fortune. So next time you're up in Room 16, take some time to have a little bit more of a careful look at these pieces of jewelry and think about the potential meanings these had to their owners and what they could have been part of in terms of contacts with different societies and transmission of different artistic motifs. So I hope you enjoyed this barn's takeout. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to our channel to get your daily serving of art. And please leave a comment. We really enjoy reading and responding to these. So thank you for watching this. And please stay safe and well. I'm Tom Collins, new Bauer family executive director of the Barnes Foundation. I hope you enjoyed barn's takeout. Subscribe and make sure your post notifications are on to get daily servings of art. Thanks for watching and for your support of the Barnes Foundation.