Ear ornament
These are the typical type of Kikuyu earrings worn by initiated young girls and women. They are called hangi but these do not appear to be authentic as they are of the wrong colour. They may have been made recently especially to sell for money or for young men to wear at dances (they traditionally often wore pink hangi for dances). The traditional ones should be thirty or more circles of dirty pink beads strung on fine iron wire (thiimo) with different colour beads on the one or two outer rings on which is a rectangular pendant of small chain. The Kikuyu did not use red and yellow traditionally for earrings. These earrings were traditionally made by men because the thin wire had to be made by drawing it through a drawplate by the wire drawers/chainmakers.
Object Summary
- Accession Loan No.
- 10/2010/28/2
- Category
- Ethnography
- Collection Class
- Personal ornament
- Material
- glassironcopper
- Common Name
- ear ornament
- Simple Name
- ornament
- Production Country
- Kenya
- Production Year High
- 1973
