Cyber Ethiopia

This week, and next, we turn our attention to the role of craftsmen in Ethiopian history. Negadras Mared Today's essay pays homage to Negadras Mared, a man of some distinction, who lived in the great northern Ethiopian city of Adwa, and he is remembered as the jeweller to Emperor Yohannes, or John, IV. A craftsman of considerable skill and refinement we know about him through the writings of the British traveller Augustus Blandy Wylde, who mentions him in his little-known work "'83 to '87 in the Soudan", which is a mine of information. “The King's Jeweller" Mared, whom Wylde describes as "the King's jeweller", was an old friend of the Englishman, who reports that he used to visit him "very often", and on such occasions would thankfully partake of

his taj, or honey wine. The Negadras, according to Wylde, was"a curious, crotchety old boy", with a "pretty daughter", whom he "used to chaff, as she talked a little Arabic which she had picked up from the working jewellers employed by her father. The old gentleman", Wylde continues, "had made jewellery for lots of Kings and Abyssinian potentates, and was a fund of information. He was of opinion that King John was the best King he had seen, and the most generous". This, Wylde supposed, was because Mared "got more work from him" than from any previous ruler, and was "doubtless pleased" that his men working on the floor below had "so much to do". Turning to Mared's house at Adwa, one of the finest in the city, the traveller continues: "Used by Females" "The room in which I used to be received was upstairs, a centre room with two others on each side, all of which communicated with each other and all opened out on to the roof, to which the staircase led. One room", he adds, "was used by the females, of which there were many - mother, aunts, sisters, and cousins". Negadras Mared's wife, whose name is unfortunately not recorded, is described, by Wylde, as "very old", but "great fun", and "very fond of showing her household treasures, of which she had a good supply, and some very decent-made stools, bedsteads, and a cupboard with some old carvings on it, which was curious and well done. Her saints and crucifixes", Wylde explains, were "numerous, and some of the representations of our Saviour grotesque in the extreme. Her room, where the domestic work went on, was not badly furnished; the sitting and reception rooms were decently clean, with some good old Persian carpets". There was nearby also a :"sleeping room". Keeping an Eye on his Workers The reception-room, which Mared used, and in which he kept all his jewellery, was fitted with a divan along one wall. In the middle of that wall there was a window which looked into the room where the jewellers worked. This arrangement was useful to the Negadras, as it enabled him to "keep an eye" on his workers. The room contained a few boxes, and its floor was covered with fresh rushes and tanned ox hides. "Mostly Odds and Ends" Mared's stock of jewellery, we are told, was "not large", and consisted "of mostly odds and ends". This was not surprising, Wylde explains, because "as a rule, jewellers in this country... keep very few goods on hand, and make to order only. It is with great difficulty", he adds, "that good specimens... can be purchased ". Elaborating on this scarcity of ready-made jewellery for sale he continues: "Outside the churches on the high days and holidays is the best place for purchasing a good collection, and when a pretty ornament is seen on the person of a young woman simply to accost her and ask her if she is willing to part with it; if so, it necessitates a visit to her house, and then a long bargain, in which the members of the familly have to be consulted; but very often some stubborn member will not part, and the bother is in vain". A Shanqella Mother "By far the best craftsman" that Negadras Mared employed, was according to Wylde, the son of a Shanqella mother, i.e. a woman from the land to the west of Ethiopian empire, who had "learnt his art in Gondar", and was particularly skilled at inlaying gold into iron. This was a skill which dated back to Aksumite times when gold was inlaid in some of the ancient kingdom's coins. The above-mentioned jeweller had made a cross symbolising the Holy Trinity, which Wylde was given by the merchants of Adwa. This cross, he says, "was of iron", while "the three heads and the ornamentation of the cross were of gold". The same artificer was then at work making Orders of Solomon, the decoration which Emperor Yohannes was to award to members of the British diplomatic mission of which Wylde was a member. Rough Tools but "Astonishingly Delicate Work" Turning to the Ethiopian jewellers as a whole, Wylde declares that the tools employed by the gold and silversmiths were "of the roughest", and consisted of "very bad shaped hammers, pincers, anvil, blow-pipe, and bellows", as well as "very rough" embossing tools and engraving pencils. It was, however, "astinishing" what "delicate work" they turned out with "such rude means". As for the bellows then in use, by blacksmiths as well as jewellers. Wylde reports: "The bellows is generally a good large sheepskin with the neck prolonged into a wood or iron pipe; the mouth of the bellows is made of two sticks fastened to the skin, and wind is got by bringing the two sticks smartly together with a clack and a rotary motion given to the skin with the other hand...' Wide Range of Items Negadras Mared and the other jewellers of Ethiopia turned out, as Wylde testifies, an extremely wide variety of items,. These included earrings, stars, hair-pins, necklaces, and bracelets; ornaments for shields, sword-handles, filigree head-stalls for mules and horses; lockets, bosses for shields, and harness and saddle ornaments, as well as anklets, toe and finger-rings, many of them of solid gold and silver. Mared, according to Wylde, had "a few specimens" of all the above items, some in "good", and others in "very poor"condition. Quality of craftsmanship seems to have deteriorated as a result of the fighting with Egypt in the mid-1870s. "Before the war with the Egyptians", Wylde quotes him as stating, "the people were much richer, and had a good deal of jewellery". Confidence, by the time of Wylde's visit, in the 1880s, was, however, "being restored", with the result that "the farmer class", to Mared’s obvious pleasure, "were again having jewellery made". Looking to the future Wylde gave it as his prophesy that "if the roads were opened for trade, the people would soon get prosperous again, and invest their savings in ornament".