Nose ornament

The quality of the metalmiths in the Tumaco region on the Pacific Colombian coast is evidenced in this nose ornament. Its small size wasn’t an impediment for the skilled goldsmith to tie twisted wires, perfect miniature spheres and elongated gold plates into a perfect combination together with a type of hammered crown in platinum. The goldsmith could keep all this together by perfectly controlling and understanding the properties of the metals and the exact temperatures of fire used to melt the tiny parts. For the pre-Hispanic people in the Tumaco region, the combination of silvery and golden colours definitely was essential as the symbol of some cosmologic representation. There is a large amount of gold and platinum to be found together in the rivers and alluviums on the Colombian Pacific coast. These people learnt how to manipulate these metals and they used platinum to produce the silvery streaks that their neighbours in Nariño or in the South obtained by working with silver. JSS