Earrings

Earrings, particularly the twisted gold hoops found throughout western Africa since the first illennium A.D., are imperative to any Senegalese jewelry ensemble. Removable cuffs of coiled or twisted wire, based on earlier styles in which women pierced their ears with multiple small hoops, reveal practical as well as ingenious redesign. Dangling versions, sometimes modeled after common necklace designs, are also popular and are known as long longs.

Dangling earrings of a gold-plated silver alloy of central tiered and filigreed flowers applied to bent wire fish hook posts. A short length of handmade bent wire chain connects the flowers to an openwork filigree sphere with globules applied at the circumference and at the bottom of the spheres.

Marian Johnson, purchased in Dakar, Senegal, 1963-late 20th century to 2012

Good As Gold: Fashioning Senegalese Women, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., October 24, 2018-February 2, 2020; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, September 16, 2020-January 3, 2021

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