Featured Solid Silver Peranakan Nyonya Dress Belts - Family Heirlooms

I've shown these elsewhere, but I thought that I'd make a dedicated thread for them, as well.







The Historical Context

What you're looking at here are a pair of solid silver Peranakan nyonya dress belts.

Peranakan (also called "Straits Chinese") were the descendants of Chinese merchants who married the native peoples of the Malay Peninsula, between the 15th and 19th centuries. Called 'Straits Chinese' because of the Strait of Malacca, and the Strait of Johor, which border the Malay Peninsula and Singapore.

The Peranakan were famous for HIGHLY INTRICATE DETAIL ON EVERYTHING.

And I do mean EVERYTHING.

Their dresses, robes, skirts, jackets, blouses, shoes, slippers, floor-tiles, window-shutters, porcelain, furniture, wall-carvings, desserts, snacks, main meals, jewelry and everything else they owned were all highly decorated in the most intricate, eye-bending detail imaginable.

Peranakan women (called "Nyonya") wore a traditional style of clothing called "Sarong Kebaya". Sarong is the wrap-around tubular skirt. Kebaya is the close-fitting jacket, or blouse that went on top.


Traditional Peranakan Nyonya Sarong-Kebya outfits (complete with traditional Peranakan beaded slippers). The belts in the pictures above would've been wrapped around the tops of the sarong skirts, to hold them up and keep them properly wrapped.

To hold the sarong together and stop it falling down/unraveling and causing a hardcore wardrobe malfunction, fashionable and wealthy Peranakan ladies would wear beautiful gold and silver belts. From my research, I understand that these belts were often custom-made to-order, by Peranakan jewelers. The family would supply the metal, or the design (or both), as well as payment. And the jeweler would create the belt for the woman who was supposed to wear it.

The belts were obviously not cheap. A well-off family might have only one or two belts, and very modest in design and size. A rich Peranakan family might have several belts of gold and silver. Buckles and belts were removable and interchangeable, so that you could swap them around and chop and change. Your favourite belt with favourite buckle. Or gold and silver contrasting, and so-forth.

Either way, these belts are RARE. They haven't been made in decades. The latest example of these belts that I've seen online, were made in the 1950s. The skills don't exist to make them anymore. The expense. The time. The intricacy. The sheer fiddliness of it all...It's a lost artform.

What Are They?

These two belts are priceless family heirlooms. They were originally owned by my paternal great-grandmother and grandmother, respectively. They were Peranakan nyonyas. My great-grandmother was born in the 1870s and died in the 1970s, living to almost 100 years old. The first belt belonged to her. My research tells me that it was probably made sometime between 1880/90-1920.

The second belt was made in the 1930s. This belonged to my grandmother. It's a much simpler, silver chain-link belt, with a weight-clasp on it made out of a 1-Guilder coin from 1929. The coin is 75% silver.

How did I get them?

My grandmother was born in 1914. She died in 2011 at the age of 97.

Grandma was not rich by any stretch of the imagination. And what little jewelry she ever had (and there was VERY little. A few earrings, her wedding-ring, a ring made of jade and some diamonds) was almost all gone. Lost or missing through the life of almost a century. We have very few family heirlooms. Anything of value that my grandfather owned was also long gone. Ivory chopsticks. Antique Chinese encyclopedia. His steamer trunk. All gone. So I held out few hopes that granny might've left me anything of any real value to inherit.

Fast-forward about two or three years.

Earlier this year, my cousin got married back in Malaya and the whole family went back for the wedding. As we would be there for a long time (almost a month) visiting relatives, my dad decided to teach me about grandma's cultural heritage and the Peranakan, since technically, I'm 1/4 Peranakan myself. So he took me to all the Peranakan museums in every city that we visited. Singapore, Penang, Kuala Lumpur etc.

While in the Singapore museum, dad pointed to a beautiful silver belt in a display-case. A traditional Peranakan nyonya dress belt. And he goes: "Grandma has one of those".

WHAT!?
WHERE!?
HOW!?
WHY!?

I immediately started interrogating him! "Where is it!? WHERE IS IT!!??"

You have to understand that almost EVERYTHING of value from my grandparents' generation is long gone! So ANYTHING that my grandmother owned would be priceless to me (she was without a doubt my favourite relative, and she was the rock and matriarch of our entire family).

Dad told me that when the old family home was pulled down, my aunt (the youngest in the family) retrieved everything from the house that was still there, after everyone else had moved away. This would've been in the late 1970s/very early 1980s.

Among them were one of my grandmother's antique sewing machines (a treadle-powered 'Butterfly' made in Shanghai. My grandmother was a professional dressmaker for 40 years), some childhood photographs, and the two belts!!

Dad had been feeling kinda worried ever since granny died that there was nothing left to remember her by. Like I said, we had very little from her generation. And she touched the lives of DOZENS of people in our family. So he went on this Indiana-Jones like crusade, pestering all his cousins and siblings and decrepit old aunts and uncles, begging them to hand over ANYTHING of value which they still had.

When he went to my aunt, she said: "Yeah I've got mother's old belts. You want them? I don't need them".

"YES!"

Dad grabbed the belts. Rescued them from almost certain destruction, and brought them back to Australia with him. This was about 5 years ago.

After he told me that he had them, when we were in the museum, I begged him for months to give them to me. I'm the only person in our family who really appreciates how rare and significant this stuff is. Nobody else would ever care! It took six months, but he finally agreed to hand them over.

Once I got them, I inspected them, polished them (they were FILTHY) and tried to research them. They have NO hallmarks on them WHATSOEVER. But researching their history, how they were made, and reading up on silver and researching the Guilder coin, means that I'm almost certain they're solid silver. Granny would never have held onto them for so long if they were just junk.

After that, I tried to find out how old they were. The newer belt was easily dated because of the coin. The older belt was far more difficult. As I said, no hallmarks.

I asked my dad and he could remember it as far back as the 60s. I knew it HAD to be older than that. I immediately emailed my cousin in Singapore and sent him photographs. He asked his father (my uncle), who was born in 1935. He's now 80, and the oldest person in our family. Uncle confirmed that they were much older. At least as far back as 1942. I knew the belt could NOT have been made in 1942. Something called the Japanese invasion meant that very few people were interested in making jewelry!!

So after a bit of brainstorming, dad concluded that it must've belonged to HIS grandmother (granny's mother). Which would make it late Victorian era or Edwardian era. I did more research online. This was VERY hard. Like I said, these belts are RARE. There's almost NO information on them anywhere. I found three similar examples to the older-style belt online, which ranged in date from 1880s-1920s. That's how I fixed when it was manufactured, and also that it was solid silver.

The belts now live in happy retirement, sleeping inside my display-cabinet along with a few other of my smaller antiques. I handle them only rarely, when I want to photograph them or show them to people. One day if I have a daughter, I'll pass them onto her. And tell her to love them and cherish them forever.

And that I will haunt her dreams if she ever sells them outside of the family.

Dimensions:

The first belt is 35in. long, including the buckle.

The second belt is 44in. long, at fullest extension.

 

Welcome to the boards!

It's a very nice story of how you were able to get family pieces that you can treasure! I don't have many things that came down to me but they are certainly extra special.

I am wondering about your first belt, there are some similar looking belts on the web that some are saying are from Borneo. Assuming (big assumption) that they are correct, are there cultural similarities to yours or perhaps the same source? I have no background or understanding of the area and would love to know more.

 

One of the reasons I like such forums as this is that I not only learn things I didn't know, but I learn about things I didn't there were!

Thanks for the edification.

And welcome!

 

We had a couple of items from my husband's great-grandfather that we never displayed. We have a lot of visitors and exchange students and with so many people coming and going, I was reluctant to leave them out. One was his diploma from Bowdoin with Joshua Chamberlain's signature and the other was the cane he received at graduation in 1865 with a carved, ivory eagle head and gold trim. Last year, we donated then to the college so they can be properly viewed by everyone. His g-grandfather had five children and so did his grandfather, so his mother inherited very little. The one thing we did keep were a lot of family photos.

 

I know this belt is Peranakan. It corresponds to similar Peranakan belts I've seen online. I also know that it is very old. I suspect it was probably made in Singapore (Where my grandmother was born). And if it was, then it would've been made by a Malay or Chinese silversmith back in the 1900s.

Thanks, and you're welcome

 

Great post, Shangas. Thanks; I learned a lot.

 

I've since done a bit more research and asked a friend who ran a jewelry business for 10 years. He confirmed that one of them is indeed solid silver. He's not sure what the other one is made of. I sent him some photos of the belts in their original state and he said he'd get back to me.

Either way, I still love them and they are beautiful