Benson Tuareg Collection Volume 46.1
STRIKING AMULET/TCHEROT MADE FOR THE ARISTOCRATIC TUAREGS OF THE HOGGAR REGION, ALGERIA, such large elaborate amulets do not appear to have been published before in the literature on jewelry of Africa. This articulated amulet is made of engraved/stamped silver, copper and brass, set with carnelian cabochons and talhakimt of large and small sizes. Strung on multistrands of dyed leather, including leather strips and coils, some stamped. The incorporation of imported European elements, like the Idar-Oberstein made talhakimt, is unique to the Tuareg, who employ a variety of methods of incorporating or mounting them. Photograph by Christine Benson.
My interest in Tuareg jewelry and craft resulted from correcting a misidentification, leading to intrigue and open admiration, augmented by exposure to reliable sources of information through our late Austrian editor Peter W. Schienerl and his German colleagues, and the ability to study various collections, including an excellent and large one. Numbering over 600 items, it was carefully gathered before 2001 by a practicing Tuareg jeweler living in Agadez, Niger, Mouloul Algumaret, for the Bensons, which now has representations from almost all areas inhabited by the Tuareg (southern Algeria, western Libya, eastern Mali, northern Niger, northeastern Burkina Faso, and Mauritania; those living in Chad and Tunisia may not be represented [Liu 2018, Seligman and Loughran 2006]). Now, via the African diaspora, Tuaregs also live in Europe and the United States, but their work is not in the Benson collection, except for those made by Algumaret himself, who lives in this country and was trained in Hoggar, Algeria, and has been in many Tuareg jewelry competitions. All of his collecting trips were on camels. Prior to 2001, beginning in 1988, the Bensons collected Tuareg jewelry from Omar Cisse/Peacecorps Baba of Mali. The considerable money paid to Algumaret for the jewelry was enough for him to renovate his Niger house, put his son through law school in Niame and his daughter through medical school in Ghana; both now live in Milan, Italy.
The Bensons are seeking a suitable museum to house their remarkable collection, a world treasure, which has both strong exhibition value and is suitable for intensive study by scholars and the craft community. There are a number of books on Tuareg jewelry and crafts, but none has covered much of the material in the Benson collection, especially from Hoggar, Algeria. While reading the fine French literature on jewelry of North Africa, I often sensed a possible deliberate omission on that of the Tuaregs, perhaps due to their often fierce resistance to the colonial powers. For example, in Camps-Fabrer detailed book (1990) on Berber jewelry of Algeria, there are only two plates on Tuareg jewelry, in which one shows all the ornaments upside-down.
The Benson collection encompasses both jewelry and other Tuareg crafts like tent ornaments, locks, decorated jewelry cases, weapons, leather goods, and a metal decorated wood pot that cannot be replicated again, due to changes in lifestyle and the current political situation within the Tuareg world, parts of which are in conflict. Most readers are familiar with the term conflict diamonds; in many cases, vintage beads and jewelry can be termed conflict ornaments, due to owners having to sell due to economic, political or environmental changes. In many cultures, jewelry is considered a form of wealth, to be accessed in times of need.
Previously, the Benson collection had very little representation of work from the Hoggar region of Algeria, where reside the most powerful of the Tuareg aristocracy. My 2019 article showed two pendants and one Koran holder from that area. Now, they have acquired many more pieces of jewelry worn by Algerian Tuaregs, even more elaborate and striking, shown on the facing page and pages three and four of this article. Large, complex with stunning crafting, this jewelry must have been even more regal when worn. Their degree of fine workmanship even extends to a wooden pot and shield, made in the Hoggar, demonstrating again the propensity of Tuareg craftspeople to apply the same high skills to any and every craft they make.
Walter Benson worked for World Health since 1987, resulting in their family living and traveling to many African countries, collecting ornaments, old beads, and sculptures. The Tuareg collection began around 1988, with Ellen meeting Mouloul around 2001; the Tuareg’s use of geometry and abstraction especially appealed to Ellen Benson, herself a gifted designer of bead jewelry. These qualities, and their ability to utilize them in endless variations has similarly attracted me to these Sahelian and Saharan craftspeople. In this article, we show a broad range of Tuareg jewelry, from the finest made for the aristocrats of the Hoggar, Algeria, to contrast with very humble leather wrapped gerbas and Agadez crosses, collected by the author and his late wife and co-founder of Ornament, Carolyn Benesh, primarily from Mauritania, via a friend.
TUAREG JEWELRY MADE IN THE HOGGAR REGION OF ALGERIA
This area is inhabited by the aristocrats of the Tuareg. Shown are five metal pendants/pectorals, all strung on leather of varying degrees of complexity, often dyed and stamped. Metals used appear to be silver, copper, brass and unusual patinated metal. Many are bezel set with carnelian cabochons, some with additional Idar-Oberstein carnelian talhakimt, some incorporated in metal, others not set, or attached by decorative rivets. The effect of using multiple metals and carnelian adds greatly to these articulated pendants, even more striking than the use of colored golds by Western jewelers. At least two are inset with wood, their black contrasting strongly with the silver and copper.
The above left-hand pendant has a unique patterned patination, never seen before. The right-hand pendant on this page is largely of leather, set with an inscribed copper square, which may be of magical text. It is not known if any of these pendants have koranic papers within them. The second image in the first row is an enlarged view of beautiful silver forehead ornament worn by men, with fine, bold engraving and stamping. The wooden shield with decorative metalwork is another example of the very fine Hoggar crafts. Photographs by David Coleman and Sherry Sherwood.
Left: OLD LIBYAN PENDANTS, two articulated, two suspended from ball with loop. Top two are set with stones, lower two of copper, silver or brass, which are metals considered pure and not necessary to cover with leather. All have fine engraving and crafting. Photographs via Mouloul Algumaret.
In 1976, the late Joel L. Malter, an antiquities dealer, showed me a cache of arrow-shaped carnelian ornaments, supposedly of ancient Egyptian origin. With a large core-drilled opening and crude lapidary technique and finish, I was reasonably certain that they were neither of that culture nor that old. Their shape triggered a memory of some Moroccan ornaments in my study collection, given me years ago by Liza Wataghani, a prominent American bead dealer once married to a Moroccan. One of these ornaments was referenced, which lead me to Arkell’s excellent series of 1935 journal articles on talhakimt/talhatana, found deep in the stacks of UCLA’s research library (Liu 1977). These articles confirmed a Cambay, Indian origin for the carnelian ornaments, later made by Germans using superior Brazilian agate and lapidary techniques and then in glass and plastic by various other Europeans. These possibly have a relationship to the design of Agadez crosses or tanaghilt (Liu 1987). The manufacture of ornaments, especially for export, both beads and pendants/amulets, was a profitable industry, leading to intense competition between Asians and Europeans, and then among Europeans (Kaspers 2018, Liu 1987).
This lucky happenstance with these carnelian amulets points out the importance of curating a collection, and the necessity of access to reliable information via reference libraries, especially at a time when the Internet did not exist. Arkell, a British administrator and researcher living in Sudan, stated that these carnelian amulets were used by the Tuareg, and were called talhakimt. It took about a decade before I was able to study Tuareg jewelry first hand, although we were fortunate that Schienerl (1986) wrote an article for Ornament linking the shape of gerba amulets to goatskins used as water carriers, as well as the Tuareg authority Creyaufmüller (1983, 1984) writing on Agadez crosses for us, and Peter providing excellent literature and books on the Tuareg. Dr. Jan Fahey, a graduate school friend, got me the beautifully illustrated French language book on the Sahara by Gabus (1982), and translated much of it, enabling me to learn about the inhabitants of this desert, their craft skills and lifeways in detail.
In the mid-1990s, through acquaintance with Jürgen Busch, who had traveled often to Mauritania, Carolyn Benesh and I were able to start our modest Tuareg jewelry collection, mostly from Mauritania, consisting of gerbas, tcherot of the square form and crosses, of many types, especially well shown in Gabus (1982, Creyaufmüller 1982, 1983; Liu 1995a, 2018). No matter how good a photograph, physical objects need to be actually studied to really understand them and the techniques involved in their fabrication. This is especially true with the work of Tuareg smiths or inadan wan-tizol (makers of jewelry/weapons), whose products are often small in size but rich in detail and technique, best seen with an Optivisor and with macro photography, which was rarely used in the literature at that time. Easily the most capable jewelers in Africa, their engraving is especially fine and detailed, with stylized symbols that tell a story not accessible to those who do not know their engraver’s language.
Being a nomadic people, their tool kit is lean, with the primary equipment of the small square anvil (not usually horned like elsewhere in Africa), short handle hammers and home-made gravers fabricated from screwdrivers or similar tools. Their ability to move and shape a wide variety of metals with their heavy hammers (silver, nickel, copper, brass, iron or steel, tin, aluminum, metals of unknown alloys, and recently, gold) is remarkably precise, as well as often working in other media such as wood, leather, soapstone/gypsum and incorporating plastics into their ornaments and other crafts. Inlaying metal into wood is also practiced with skill, and stone setting is seen in newer work. Their smiths are equally adept at lost-wax and sand-casting, besides fabrication. Their small, square anvil is driven into a forked log partially buried in the mud floor of a hut; this setup serves as the workbench, with both hands and feet being involved in their work process. Remarkably, all these crafting skills are passed on from father to son, or through a long apprenticeship with non-family jewelers. Now, smiths/jewelers often travel to other countries to learn new techniques. The Canadian jeweler Matthieu Cheminée (2014) has chronicled present practices of West African jewelers/craftspeople, including many Tuareg, by working with a number of them in Africa.
Through direct handling and observation, as well as via photographs, I have been able to study a portion of this vast Benson collection (Liu 2019). As someone intensely interested in comparing the skills of craftspeople, studying jewelry made for the aristocrats of Tuareg society, like those from the Hoggar of Algeria, to the gerbas worn by ordinary members of this nomadic people, I have come to greatly admire their crafting skills, as jewelry and other craft made by and for all levels of their society are treated with consummate skill, no matter how precious or mundane the material.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I thank Ellen and Walter Benson for allowing me to study their astounding Tuareg collection, acquired over twenty years, all with the help of a Tuareg jeweler from Agadez, Mouloul Algumaret, who spoke no English at first contact but is now fluent. The jewelry shown in this article was documented by the Bensons in identification sessions with Algumaret. They have also supplied critical literature and images taken by their family members and friends: Christine Benson, Harry Benson, David Coleman, and Sherry Sherwood. Our own small study collection of Tuareg jewelry purchased in 1994-95 from Jürgen Busch and Gudrun Kerschna, as well as their gifts, have enabled me to more closely study the personal adornment of this culture, but are of more humble origins. Jürgen has also supplied much important information on the Tuaregs. I have had informative conversations with jeweler/author Matthieu Cheminée about Tuareg and other West/North African jewelers. I am still very grateful to Dr. Jan Fahey for obtaining a copy of Gabus’s superb 1982 reference on the Sahara for our library; it remains one of the definitive works on Tuareg and Mauritanian jewelry and techniques, derived from mid-to-late twentieth century French expeditions to Northwest/West Africa.
BENSON COLLECTION GERBAS of metal or metal covered with leather; some Hoggar, Algeria or from Niger. Two of these are likely silver, one with brass and iron, the other with copper backing, and profusely stamped. The center gerba is probably iron/steel, covered with leather, with cutouts for the brass insets soldered/sweated onto the underlying metal. All follow the classic goatskin water carrier shape. Photographs by Harry Benson.
GERBAS FROM MAURITANIA; two to left via Jürgen Busch, 1994, double-gerba from Jocelyne Okrent, 2024, 9.0 cm H. The cord wound around it is untied for wearing and is strung with old beads, mostly glass. The leather covered metal on both sides is probably iron or steel, onto which has been sweated white-metal geometric shapes, all engraved. Note differences in materials and crafting. Large leather covered gerba has fine, classic goatskin water carrier shape; adjacent is all metal gerba, of iron, silver, copper, and brass. Same double gerba is repeated in left-hand photograph, with two other double gerbas, same source and date. They are fabricated in the same way but additionally have bosses soldered to some of the metal overlays. Metals like iron/steel are considered impure, thus covered with leather (J. Busch, pers. comm. 6/2025). Photographs by Robert K. Liu/Ornament.
SELECTION OF TUAREG CROSSES often called Agadez crosses; in the past there were 21 defined types, but now there are more. Strung for wearing either through large opening, bail or attached loop, as on necklace
with silver/glass beads.
LEATHER-COVERED VERSUS ALL METAL GERBA, with leather covered more common, middle right image (Liu 2018).
ARRAY OF MAURITANIAN AMULETS/TCHEROT, TRARZA CROSSES AND GERBAS showing the variety of Tuareg jewelry used as pendants. Most were collected by J. Busch, in the mid-1990s. Carolyn L.E. Benesh/Robert K. Liu Collection. Photographs by Robert K. Liu/Ornament.
TALHAKIMT/TALHATANA AND TURM RINGS ranging from six antique Cambay-made carnelian specimens in the lower right-hand corner to German celluloid turm rings in the upper right, which also shows well-made Idar-Oberstein agate talhakimt/talhatana, some dyed. To the upper and lower right are various molded glass talhakimt in large and tiny sizes, made by Czechs and Bohemians. The Tuareg jewelers only use the well-made Idar agates in their metal jewelry, as seen on this and facing page, as well as the first page and fourth, where the agate amulets are not encased. Glass and carnelian talhakimt are often used in women’s hair decorations and jewelry (Gabus 1982,
Liu 2008, 2018a, b).
REFERENCES/BIBLIOGRAPHY:
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TUAREG PENDANTS AND RINGS incorporating German Idar-Oberstein carnelian talhakimt and talhatana amulets, worn as rings, hair ornaments and pendants. To the right is a strung pendant, with black beads and engraved silver beads (Liu 2014). Largest pendant 14 cm high. The metal mounting incorporates fine crafting and details, as seen in lower right photograph. It is not certain if entire or partial agate amulets are used. Lower left image shows portion of rare Tuareg necklace strung on hair, incorporating talhatana, Idar agate drops, beads, a shell, and carved conus discs (Liu 2008). Lower image shows conus disks of various sizes and a silver transposition. Hair necklace courtesy of late E.J. Harris. Photographs by Robert K. Liu/Ornament.
JEWELRY MADE BY MOULOUL ALGUMARET: ARTICULATED NECKLACE OF SILVER and inlaid wood, a fairly common technique of more contemporary Tuareg jewelry, usually identified as ebony but often abaka wood, which is endangered (Algumaret in Liu 2019). ARTICULATED AMULETS, one set with stone, other wood, all finely engraved, depicting style and techniques of more recent Tuareg jewelry. TWO PENDANTS OF METAL ENCASED TALHAKIMT, of silver, one with gold, elaborate metalwork, one strung on necklace. The use of intact or partial carnelian talhakimt set in elaborate metalwork is unique to the Tuareg; compare with antique specimens on facing page.
BIRDS-EYE VIEW OF ALGUMARET’S AMERICAN WORKBENCH, a flat surface, unlike log anvil of smiths working in Africa. Many of his tools may have been bought from jewelry tool supplier, although the short-handle hammers, gravers and stamps may have been made by Mouloul or his teacher. One stamp rests on top of lead sheet. Square anvil is mounted into bench; it has hole for small stakes. His toolset is more elaborate than those Tuareg working in the Sahel and Sahara. Jewelry photographs by Christine Benson; workbench photo via Mouloul Algumaret.
“Being a nomadic people, their tool kit is lean, with the primary equipment of the small square anvil (not usually horned like elsewhere in Africa), short handle hammers and home-made gravers fabricated from screwdrivers or similar tools. Their ability to move and shape a wide variety of metals with their heavy hammers (silver, nickel, copper, brass, iron or steel, tin, aluminum, metals of unknown alloys, and recently, gold) is remarkably precise, as well as often working in other media such as wood, leather, soapstone/gypsum and incorporating plastics into their ornaments and other crafts.”
Robert K. Liu is Coeditor of Ornament, for many years its in-house photographer, as well as covering ethnographic and ancient jewelry, and events related to wearable art, both in and out of the Ornament studio. Last year marked the fiftieth anniversary of Ornament Magazine, which he and his late wife Carolyn Benesh began in 1974. He feels equal parts of incredulity and pride at reaching this milestone. Not always conscious of what was central to his interest in personal adornment, in recent years he has realized that the driving force behind his research and writing has really been the evolution and comparison of human skills, whether expressed in ancient, ethnographic or contemporary jewelry, or in scale models and mechanical vehicles, and how they are made and operate. Chinese and other faience, composites and glass, whether ancient, ethnographic or contemporary are among some of his research interests, as well as vintage Chinese folk jewelry. A great admirer of Tuareg craftsmanship, Liu has written several times about the collection of Ellen Benson. In this issue, he compares work from Benson’s collection, which now includes pieces from the elite Hoggar tribe, of Algeria, as well as from Tuaregs in Libya and the work of Mouloul Algumaret, the Tuareg jeweler who gathered the Benson Collection, with other Tuareg pieces that he’s photographed or collected in the past with the late Carolyn Benesh. The Bensons are seeking an appropriate museum to house their unique collection of Tuareg jewelry and crafts.
