Shirley Moskow

PUBLISHED IN: Yankee, Modern Maturity, Boston Herald, Boston Globe, Buffalo News, The Jewish Advocate, Hadassah Magazine, The Homesteader, South American Explorer, Garden (New York Botanical Society), Bridal Guide, Provincetown Arts Annual, Discovery (Inflight of Cathay Pacific Airlines), Elements, American Profile, Traveller (New Jersey), AmericanStyle, American Fitness, Colored Stone, Solitaire (Singapore), Female (Singapore), Changi (Singapore Airport), Country Discovery, Caribbean Travel & Life, VIA (California State Automobile Association), Harvard Magazine, Natural Home; Art and Living Magazine.

SPECIALTIES: Destination travel, soft adventure, history, archaeology, New England, art, jewelry design, Jewish travel.

BOOKS: Hunan Hand & Other Ailments, Letters to The New England Journal of Medicine; Emma's World, An Intimate Look at Lives Touched by the Civil War; revised Boston's Freedom Trail: A Souvenir Guide: contributor, Best Places to Kiss in New England; anthology contributor, Bicycle Love.

(781) 862-7697
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Lexington, MA 02421
» Smoskow@gis.net

From A Past Life

by Shirley Moskow

The past is always present in Peru, where a constant stream of traffic circulates around an ancient pyramid in downtown Lima. Nowhere is the merging of past and present more event, however, than in the design of contemporary jewelry. Jewelers not only preserve, but also celebrate the Incan heritage.

For about 100 years, until 1532, the Incas of Peru governed 13 million subjects in an empire they called Tawantinsuyu. It rivaled the Roman Empire for size and influence. They built a netwok of roads that
connected the capital, Cuzco -- which means "navel of the world" -- to communities in Colombia, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and Ecuador. They created sophisticated irrigations systems, piping water to the desert
and through mountains, which were terraced for planting. They stored and distributed the harvest so that no one went hungry in the largest welfare state the world has ever known. They also supported the arts,
especially music and dance.

What the Incas lacked was a written language. In its place, they devised innovative methods and images for recording information. And, just as a family passes along its stories from one generation to the next with heirloom jewelry, the Andean people -- the Incas were the aristocracy --passed on their history and mythology through an oral tradition in Chechua, the ancient Indian language that is still heard in the streets.
Today, hand-crafted gold and silver jewelry -- often accented with amber, onyx, lapis lazuli, tiger's eye, opal, and turquoise, as well as glass beads, coral, bamboo and colored seashells -- preserves this heritage.

Peru is among the world's top producers of quality silver and gold. In Peruvian mythology, silver represents the tears of the moon and gold represents the sun god. The Incan chief, son of the sun, ruled from
Cuzco, the Golden Capital. Cuzco's old alleys still bear pock marks where the Spanish conquistadors in 1532 ripped sheets of gold from stone walls. The palace walls also were covered in gold. The Incan chief sat on a sold gold throne. He ate off gold plates and drank from gold vessels, which were discarded after a single use. He wore gold garments and carried a gold rod topped by a gold star. He strolled in a garden of gold statuary and gold flowers studded with colored gemstones. No one else was permitted to wear the precious metal.

INSPIRED BY HISTORY

Peruvian artists discover inspiration in unlike places. The tumi, a ceremonial knife with a semicircular blade, was once used in Incan sacrificial rites. Today, it is among the most popular designs in jewelry worn by men and women. It is rendered in a variety of sizes and the handle is often a jeweled Incan figure standing on the flat back of the blade.Many variation of another contemporary necklace design call to
mind the Andean method of accounting. The Andean people conducted trade, kept track of inventories, and tabulated the census on knotted strings called quipus. The accountants used a decimal system and color-coded knots to register specific numbers on a kid of textile abacus that served as a tool for bookkeeping. Modern necklaces made with small colored stones on slim silver or gold drops evoke the memory of quipus...