Antique Handmade Yemenite Tribal Silver & Red Glass Bead Tower Ring

Antique Handmade Yemenite Tribal Silver & Red Glass Bead Tower Ring

Late 19th century.

Provenance:

Gérald Minkoff (1937-2009) and Muriel Olesen (1948-2020), Geneva.

Measure: 5 cm H

Size 14.25

Wight: 17 gr.

This ornate tower-ring was handcrafted during the end of 1800s in Yemen. Tower rings were worn throughout the region of Yemen and neighboring areas. They were traditionally worn by the women of the tribe.

Yemeni women wear jewelry like necklaces, bracelets, and earrings, which hold cultural significance and are often passed down through families.

🔹Gérald Minkoff and Muriel Olesen🔹

Muriel Minkoff-Olesen (1948-2020) completed her studies at the Geneva School of Design. Gérald Minkoff (1937-2009) was a trained anthropologist and biologist.

Both achieved renown as artists, and from their meeting in 1967, the iconic pair of contemporary art became inseparable. The travel-loving duo Olesen-Minkoff explored life like curious nomads, roaming the globe from Africa to Asia, Oceania, and the Americas to Patagonia.

As artists and experienced collectors of contemporary art, they understandably also had a keen sensitivity to the aesthetics and concepts of non-European art.

The couple's Geneva apartment, perhaps their most beautiful collaborative work, thus became a place where the works of close friends such as Daniel Spoerri, Arman and Man Ray, as well as their own photographs, coexisted with almost a thousand objects from Africa, Oceania, Asia and South America.