Deccan Shell Locket

$150.00 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Art jewelry inspired by The Met collection. This delicate gold vermeil locket borrows the shell motif on a fabulous 17th-century locket pendant from the Deccan region of India and now in The Met's Islamic Art collection. The cap on the original pendant portrays a makara , a fantastical aquatic beast from Hindu mythology, with two turquoise eyes and a red stone at the center of its head. Traces of a red residue suggest that the Museum's pendant may have been filled with an aromatic substance, which would have…