On view
Ear spools,
1400–1520
Aztec Jewelry
Among the Aztec, jewelry made of precious materials marked its wearer’s high social status and conveyed certain ideas about his or her character. The labret, or lip-plug, was inserted through a pierced hole in the lower lip and qualified the wearer's speech and breath as precious. The Aztec term for king, tlahtoani, means "speaker," attesting to the high value of refined, poetic rhetoric in Aztec culture. Many peoples of Mesoamerica also believed in a soul which resided in one’s breath; decorating the openings in the head, including the nostrils, mouth, and ears, signaled the preciousness and vitality of a person’s soul. The materials used in these ornaments came from distant lands through the Aztec’s expansive trade network. Turquoise, for example, originated in modern-day New Mexico, whereas jade was procured from the border of Guatemala and Honduras.
More Context
Didactics
These amazing ornaments were fashioned by producing a pair of obsidian spools and then fitting them with polished quartz crystal cores drilled to hold two small jade rods with golden pins. Ear piercing and adornment is one of the oldest forms of human body modification and the reasons for its practice are as diverse as the cultures that practiced it, from simple personal expression to the need to display accomplishments gained through rights of passage, merit, or royal distinction. Objects of precious stone and metal like this stunning example were reserved exclusively for the paramount elite in most Mesoamerican societies. Royal children had their ears pierced in infancy and a peg was inserted to begin the process of expanding the ear lobe. As individuals proceeded through life, ear “spools” of greater size and quality were inserted. The preference for the unusual “spool” shape was that it allowed the wearer to open the lobe and slip it around the narrower middle to secure it in place. The owner of this pair must have been very rich lord or lady to be able to afford jewels made of quartz not to mention obsidian, jade, and gold of this quality. While rock crystal is common, it is hard to find pieces of suitable size and clarity. Cutting and shaping can be incredibly difficult and it must have taken the craftsperson that made these many weeks to produce.
Information
1400–1520
North America, Mexico, Puebla
November 9, 1989, Paul Arany, New York, sold to the Princeton University Art Museum [1].
Notes:
[1] According to an Arany invoice in the curatorial file.
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1989," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 49, no. 1 (1990): p. 24-57., p. 54
- Felipe Solís, The Aztec Empire: Catalogue of the Exhibition (New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004)., cat. no. 293 (illus.)
- Virginia M. Fields, et al., Children of the Plumed Serpent: the Legacy of Quetzalcoatl in ancient Mexico (London: Scala Publishers Limited, 2012)., p. 225
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013)
