Locket and Chain

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This twenty-seven link chain and matching locket pendant are fabricated of dark-colored carved and molded tortoiseshell. The locket attaches to the chain with a hook and two intertwined loops and is carved with a superimposed monogram, possibly meant to read "MVEC." Tortoiseshell was a popular material with American jewelry and comb manufacturers throughout the nineteenth century. The most commonly used material came from the hawksbill sea turtle and was imported to the United States from China and the West Indies. A process for manufacturing tortoiseshell jewelry was recorded in Horace Greeley’s "Great Industries of the United States", published in 1872, on page 386: "This material is first soaked for forty-eight hours in warm water, and then shaved, cut into pieces, which are joined together until the requisite thickness is obtained, and then carved by hand or inlaid with gold."

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art