A marriage necklace in sheet gold with applied wires, red silk ties and beads, South India, c. 1850. A marriage necklace (thali), sheet gold with applied wires and stamped motifs imitating granulation; the red silk ties with beads with twisted ribs. This South Indian marriage necklace is made of sheet gold pendants formed by hammering against a metal die, and adding minute motifs formed from gold wires or, again, by hammering against depressions cast into a metal block. The construction is therefore quite complex, but the finished work is extremely light. The form may be seen in an illustration to a study of South Indian jewellery written by E. B. Havell in 1894, showing typical jewellery found on the western coast of the southernmost tip of the subcontinent. He noted that jewellery from the Malabar coast and Trivandrum was very different from that worn to the east. The necklace was acquired by the Indian Museum in London in 1855 and was transferred to the South Kensington Museum, later renamed the Victoria and Albert Museum, in 1879.