When my aunt died, dealing with her estate proved to be a sad and heavy burden for Mom, and ultimately a lot of my aunt's personal effects just lingered in boxes in Mom's basement. My aunt had been widowed young and had led a vivid and active social life which was Not Discussed in Front of The Children. She also, it turned out when the boxes migrated to my sister's basement at the end of Mom's lifetime, had accumulated a rather large collection of jewelry. There may have been a connection. Sis and I just shrugged and divvied up the swag.
I'm posting a picture of this gold and lapis pendant that I found in the treasure chest, because I think it's a stylized version of a constellation, but I can't tell which. I'm hoping someone more knowledgeable than I will be able to identify it. The pendant's about the size of a US fifty-cent piece. Any thoughts? Chime in!
Hi WFF, you are right and that's the symbol of Sagittarius. Here's a beautiful Hubble photo of the actual constellation http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/heic0305c/
ReplyDeleteCris, thank you so much! What a great photo! I find it interesting that the jeweler selected a piece of dark blue lapis with whitish streaks, because that background resembles the sky in the photo you sent. Hmm, I wonder who in Aunt Lili's life could have been a Sagittarius...
ReplyDeleteNow I am not so sure that the Hubble constellation is the right one! This is from the Chandra x ray observatory and it looks quite different http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/constellations/sagittarius.html...The lapis is a perfect background, you can almost make out far away nebulas and dust clouds.
ReplyDeletehi, Cris - possibly rotated? and I'm sure the pendant has a very stylized and streamlined version of the constellation. Also it makes sense that a jeweler would do a Horoscope series, no?
ReplyDeleteIt's definitely the Sagittarius astrological symbol so it's not really meant to reflect the actual constellation. There are some jewels that replicate the real position of the stars but in most cases, although they can be quite beautiful, they only appeal to astronomy geeks!
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