Ostentatious and Ordinary: EAC Object Stories

Evelyn Lee

Gold Earring Collected from the Ottoman Empire

Earring 1916.116

A single ornate gold-toned earring with a circular top featuring small raised dots and a central turquoise stone. Two small crescent-shaped gold pieces with turquoise accents hang below, followed by a vertical stack of beads: a filigree gold bead, a red bead, a turquoise bead, and a larger ribbed gold bead at the bottom. The earring has a curved hook and an overall traditional, handcrafted look.

Photo Credit: Evelyn Lee, 2026.

Metadata

Creator

Once Known Creator

Date

Before 1916

Culture

Turkish

Medium

Gold; Metalworking; Filigree, Granulation, Jewelry making, Coral, Turquoise, Blue Glass

Credit Line

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Wade

Description

This Earring is a piece made with gold, turquoise, coral, and blue glass. It was possibly purchased by Ellen and Homer Wade on their Mediterranean trip in the 1910s in the Ottoman Empire, potentially in what is now Turkey. It was later donated to the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1916 by Ellen Wade. The creator and date of creation are unknown, however.

Fun Fact

The word turquois comes from the 17th-century French word for “Turkish”

StoryMap
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About the Collector

This video talks about the collector of this earring, Ellen Wade.

 

Page created by Evelyn Lee for HIS 455 “Power, Knowledge & Gender” at Cleveland State University, Spring 2026.

 

 

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Educate. Analyze. Curate. by Evelyn Lee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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