Moroccan Taguemmut Bead Necklace with Coral & Amber (Tifilit)

This splendid necklace from the Berber or Amazigh People or Morocco is known as a tifilit necklace. It is more elaborate than most having an upper and a lower strand. The main elements are four large hollow, pierced and enamelled egg-like beads known as taguemmut. Each is decorated with yellow and green enamel. (The egg shape relates to fertility and fecundity)

Additionally the necklace comprises natural amber and coral beads. The coral is unusually large and chunky and of a type known in Morocco as ‘apple coral’.

There are also 12 Moroccan coins each with Arabic dates which approximate to around AD 1902.

Taguemmut beads were expensive and so too was amber and coral, so a necklace such as this would have been owned by a Berber or Amazigh family with considerable means. Such necklaces would be added to or reduced as the family’s fortunes rose or fell.

Taguemmut beads usually were the product of local Jewish silversmiths who specialised in enamel work on behalf of Berber/Amazigh clients. The large and showy beads were also worn by local Jewish women.

The necklace is in its original configuration other than the ends of each strand where the original cotton stringing has been replaced with coral beads and a metal closure to make the necklace more wearable. The elements have also been re-threaded on a nylon threading to ensure that the necklace remains robust. This is likely to have been done in the 1970s. But essentially, the necklace remains in its original, authentic form, and the elements – the taguemmut beads and the amber and especially large coral chunks mark it out as an especially impressive example.

 

Above: an early photograph of women wearing double stranded beads of the type here.