Mold for Cornflower Pendant

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This mold from Amarna was used to produce cornflower pendants (see 31.114.2a). The mold would hae been created by using an existing pendant to impress a shape into a pad of clay, which was then fired. The mold was then used to produce cornflower pendants in faience paste. Once molded, the pendant was not fired in the mold, but tipped out of it to dry before later firing, so that the mold itself could be used many times in quick succession. Eventually the mold, because it was porous, soaked up some of the paste materials - the whitish cloud seen over the surface within this mold is the result. After considerable use, the mold would have blurred and been discarded.

Egyptian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met collection of ancient Egyptian art consists of approximately 30,000 objects of artistic, historical, and cultural importance, dating from about 300,000 BCE to the 4th century CE. A signifcant percentage of the collection is derived from the Museum's three decades of archaeological work in Egypt, initiated in 1906 in response to increasing interest in the culture of ancient Egypt.

Metropolitan Museum of Art