Object
The Labba Bib-Necklace
The masterpiece of Yemeni adornment, the labba is built in superimposed storeys of silver. Here is how to read this breast-collar of silver, coral and cornelian.
The masterpiece of the bride
The labba (also labbe or labbeh) is the great bib-necklace that covers a Yemeni bride’s chest. It is built up in superimposed rows, or storeys: ranks of small silver boxes, beads and pendants assembled until they form a kind of cuirass of silverwork. The more storeys it carries, the more it speaks of the family’s wealth. Its name marks the hollow of the throat, where it sits.
How the necklace is read
The top forms the base, often set with amulet-boxes; below it hang rows of pendants, filigreed discs and small bells that sound with movement. The components are linked vertically and horizontally by coiled rings, frequently in a figure-eight. Coral and cornelian, set among the silver, add the colour and the protective meaning. Village labbas characteristically carry coin pendants; the grandest may run to thirty rows or more.
Filigree, granulation and the Ottoman web
Open, airy labbas of applied filigree — light as a spider’s web — became popular under the Ottoman presence in 19th-century Yemen, where they were named for that technique. Earlier pieces relied more on casting and solid, embossed forms. The artisan also scattered tiny granules in rosettes and lozenges, the signature of Yemeni hand-work.
A dowry one wears
Like most major Yemeni jewellery, the labba was at once an ornament and a store of value — portable wealth, made to be worn, shown, and if need be melted down again. That is why old, complete examples, with all their storeys intact, are now rare and sought after.
Coral and cornelian: colour and protection
If the silver gives the labba its structure, coral and cornelian give it life. Red coral, carried in along the trade routes from the Mediterranean, and cornelian, polished into warm beads, were never purely decorative: both were believed to turn aside the evil eye and to favour fertility. Their placement among the silver follows a precise grammar, in which every colour has its position and its meaning — a code a Yemeni bride and her family would have read at a glance.
The Most Cherished Piece
Among all Yemeni ornaments the labba is the one most often singled out as the supreme achievement of the Jewish silversmiths of Sanaa. It was the trademark of the Sanaani Jewish bride, and the piece in which a master could display the full range of his art.1 A large applied-filigree labba could carry thirty rows or more, each row built from dozens of separately made components, so that a single necklace gathered weeks of work and the whole vocabulary of the craft into one object.2
How the Parts Are Joined
The components hang in vertical columns, each piece linked to the one below by a figure-of-eight wire the Sanaani silversmiths called methamāna, "the eight." The horizontal rows, or storeys, are read from the base downward; their shapes — rhomboids, squares, rosettes, round beads — repeat in disciplined columns, and the lower edge usually closes in triangles or cones.2 Labbas worn by Muslim women often differed from those of Jewish women: many lacked the built-up base, and in central Yemen favoured rounded, belly-shaped components likened to barley-grains.2
Signature, Hallmark and Value Today
The most valued labbas and related pieces today are the oldest and the documented. The rarest survivals, such as the eighteenth-century silver gathered by the Israel Museum and the Walters Art Museum, can be dated by the hallmarks of the ruling Imams struck into the metal, and many carry the name of the maker — among them renowned Jewish silversmith families who passed the craft from one generation to the next.3 A signed, hallmarked, finely granulated piece in good condition stands far above the anonymous market work, and far above the lighter mass-made jewellery that displaced the craft after the silversmiths left.4
Notes
- On the labba as the masterwork and trademark of Sanaa's Jewish women, see Klein-Franke (2008) and the catalogue note in Lot-Art's "Labbeh, Sana'a" listing.
- On the construction — storeys, the methamāna figure-eight links, component shapes, and the Jewish/Muslim differences — see Aviva Klein-Franke, "Silver and Gold Cuirass of Mail (The Labbe Necklaces)" (2008).
- On Imam hallmarks, makers' names and the renowned silversmith families, see the Israel Museum exhibition Treasures of Yemenite Silverwork (2015), drawn from the Content–Zucker gift to the Israel Museum and the Walters Art Museum.
- On value, dispersal and the displacement of the craft, see Ransom, Silver Treasures from the Land of Sheba (2014).
Select Sources
Klein-Franke, Aviva. "Silver and Gold Cuirass of Mail (The Labbe Necklaces)." In Ma'ase Rokem: Dress and Jewelry in the Tradition of the Jews of Yemen. Tel Aviv: E'ele BeTamar, 2008, pp. 89–102.
Ransom, Marjorie. Silver Treasures from the Land of Sheba: Regional Yemeni Jewelry. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2014.
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Treasures of Yemenite Silverwork (exhibition), 2015.