Featured I knew what this was. Heh. Peranakan.

Paging @Shangas

Cost me about a cup of coffee.

 

Nicely done, Bear...wanna double yer Money?

 

Certainly looks like it. Solid silver, too. Jolly good!

 

Awkward to wear as a necklace, but sized for a barbie doll as a belt. Nice score!

 

Very nice with the birdies. High silver fineness. Stylewise it is influenced by Javanese belts, so could be Javanese Peranakan.

 

It came from a bloke who seems to buy things at car boot sales for far too much and then sell them below what he pays. I’ve watched him. I wasn’t sure it was silver or plated to start with, but didn’t care for four quid. And it fits, it’s longer than it looks.

aj, shangas, what fineness do you think on the silver please?

 

According to my files it is 'Zu Yin', which is higher than sterling.
The exact fineness may vary, could be .950, could be .980 or another fineness, but higher than .925.

 

I need a Fairy Godfather like that chap !...actually a Hogfather would do.

 

He looks like a Krampus with a bleach job.

 

As AJ correctly states, the hallmark, in Chinese characters, is "Zu Yin" - literally "Pure Silver".

In practice, the purity varied, but was typically between 95.00-to-99.99%, but either way, was definitely higher than sterling (92.50%).

The fact it's hallmarked in Chinese would lend credence to the Peranakan theory, since the vast majority of Peranakan were of Chinese heritage..like me!

 

the mark on the left or right ?

 

On the left. The other one would be the maker.

 

Many thanks both. Definitely a result!

I did find one, if I can hunt it out again, sold by an auction house as silver plate. Hah. Little did they know.

 

The left mark, read top-down, is Zu Yin - Pure Silver.

The mark on the right would be the maker's mark or name or whatever.

I've seen Zu Yin on a few other belts of different Peranakan style. I have two at home which are solid silver and marked Zu Yin.

 

One of the belts in my collection - Siamese Peranakan - with zu yin silver mark behind the buckle...

 

Hooo come to Mama! oh yeah, it already did.

 

Absolutely!!

The difficulty with assigning anything as being made/worn/used/owned by the Peranakan, is understanding WHAT and WHO the Peranakan are.

The word "Peranakan" on its own, just means "Locally Born" or "Natively Born".

It's an Indo-Malay word. There are Peranakan in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. These four countries are considered the Peranakan homeland.

The vast, VAST majority of Peranakan are what's known as "Peranakan Cina" ("Chee-nah") - literally the "Locally-Born Chinese". Literally half my family is all Peranakan Cina, and myself by extension. Most will be either Buddhist, or Christian.

Smaller Peranakan groups are the Peranakan Chetti (Peranakans of Indian, rather than Chinese, descent, who are Hindu).

The Peranakan Jawi (who are also of Indian descent, but Muslim).

Then there's also the Peranakan Kristang - who are of Eurasian-Portuguese descent, who are mostly Christians, and depending on how far you stretch the definition, there's also the Peranakan Yehudi, which is supposed to be the Jewish Peranakans, but this last group is TIIIINY to the state of virtual non-existence in the modern world.

To be considered "Peranakan", your ancestors must've been a foreign people (Chinese, Indian, Portuguese, usually), whose males married into the local female population, and whose children and descendants (the "locally-born") adopted a hybrid culture from both their migrant fathers, and their locally-born native mothers.

So for example, the Peranakan Cina (the largest group by far), will almost all have Chinese surnames, but will speak Malay, or Indonesian (the languages of their mothers), while also speaking Cantonese or Hokkien (the dialects of their fathers). But hardly ANY of them will speak modern Mandarin. That's because Mandarin is a NORTHERN Chinese language, whereas Peranakan ancestors all came from the south of China (Hong Kong, Guandong, Fujian, etc). A lot of the culinary and dining customs, the religious and cultural observances/customs, etc, will all have come from there, as well.

The jewelry styles, likewise, change a lot, depending on where you're from.

The belts, the most common example, change everywhere. There's Javanese style, Singapore/Malay style, Siamese style, etc, up and down the peninsula. But they're almost always made of silver (or silver-plate), or if you're really rich, gold (22kt, usually), and were worn mostly by the women. Sometimes men wore them, but that was less common.

 

What an informative thread! I had one of these belts, only silver-plated. Took a long time for me to figure out what it was.
Appreciate the in-depth overview of Peranakan by Shangas!

 

Shangas, that’s absolutely fascinating. Thank you so much.

 

You're welcome. Some antiques are more distinctly Peranakan than others. For example, jewelry, porcelain, silverware, etc, can usually be identified as Peranakan from the style of decoration, or where and when it was made. Other pieces are less obvious.

As a friend of mine once said: Sometimes it's not about whether a piece is "Peranakan" in the sense of whether it was manufactured by the Peranakan, or not, but rather, whether it was something known to be used by the Peranakan in daily life.

Because a lot of the time, items used by the Peranakan were not manufactured by them - they were just the target market, and the main purchasers/users of such items.

Pieces like porcelain and furniture, for example, were usually not made by the Peranakan, but were simply styles or types that were favoured by them, and used in their homes.

Usually these styles are Chinese in influence (since, as I said, the vast majority of Peranakan are Chinese), taken from the south of China - the homeland of their ancestors.

This is where the "difficulty" that I mentioned earlier, pops up:

Not all "Chinese" things were used by the Peranakan. But at the same time, not all Peranakan used Chinese things (remember, there are other types of Peranakans!!). This is what makes identifying Peranakan stuff so challenging. Really it's a balance of probability.

For example - Peranakan porcelain (a type known as "nyonyaware") is very very distinctive, and you can usually spot it a mile away. It was a style used almost entirely by the Peranakan, and nobody else. It was manufactured cheaply in China, and shipped in-bulk to Malacca, Penang, and Singapore, and purchased literally by the crateful.

But that's not to say that the Peranakan didn't use OTHER types of porcelain as well -- of course they did. BUT -- are these also to be classified as Peranakan? That's up to you to decide. A lot of people would probably say 'no', but I've also known plenty of people who say 'yes', simply because it was used by the Peranakan, even if it wasn't of their known style.

You can see how confusing it gets, can't you?

Items of JEWELRY (silverware, goldware, accessories, etc -- like the belts) are more easily identified as Peranakan because these were almost always manufactured by the Peranakan themselves, to suit their own tastes. Again, these varied by region. A Siamese Peranakan belt will be different from a Singaporean, which will be different from a Javanese or Sumatran style belt. A belt made in Malacca in the 1900s will be different from one made in Jakarta in the 1930s, and so-on...