The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 18, 2025

Gold locket shaped like an oval pinched in at either side depicting a central person with white enamel skin on a dark blue background wearing a gold dress with partially missing dark red and green glass inlays. They fold their arms in front of them, looking to our left. Red flowers and green leaves flank them. Above the locket fuses a gold loop and below hangs a cluster of white then red orbs.

Locket

1700s

Northwestern India, Rajasthan, Rajput Kingdom of Jaipur

gold and enamel
Case: 3.1 x 3.5 cm (1 1/4 x 1 3/8 in.)
Gift of the Twentieth Century Club 1960.198
Location: 242B Indian Painting

Did You Know?

Green glass, now mostly lost, once filled the lozenge shapes in the woman’s gown.

Description

This locket may have once been an amulet containing prayers and talismans or a container for perfume or other cosmetic items. At the center, a young woman stands between two groupings of large red flowers. The connections between women and nature have ancient precedents in India, often communicating auspicious fertility. Luxury enamels like this were the hallmark of 18th-century Jaipur goldsmiths and jewelry makers.

This locket was given to the museum by the Twentieth Century Club, a women’s community group founded in the early 1900s with satellites across the United States.
  • ?–1960
    (Twentieth Century Club, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)
    1960–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Lee, Sherman E. “Year in Review | 1960.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 47, no. 10 (1960): 223–254. Mentioned: p. 251, no. 36. www.jstor.org
    Fyson, Nance Lui. Great Treasures of the World. Basingstoke: The Automobile Association, 1997. Reproduced: p. 142.
  • Temples and Worship in South Asia. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 14, 2024-March 9, 2025).
    Carpets and Canopies in Mughal India​ (Indian art rotation). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 22-September 8, 2024).
    Nature Supernatural. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 22, 2023-March 3, 2024).
    Art of Mughal India. The Asia Society Museum, New York, NY (organizer) (January 15, 1964-March 25, 1963).
    Year in Review - Nineteen Hundred Sixty. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 30, 1960-January 1, 1961).
  • {{cite web|title=Locket|url=false|author=|year=1700s|access-date=18 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1960.198