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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Shangas, post: 30240, member: 360&quot;]Not a choker. But yes, it is silver. It has no hallmarks, but I&#039;ve done research and I&#039;ve tested it, and it is solid silver. </p><p><br /></p><p>What you&#039;re looking at here is something extremely rare, old and very precious to me. </p><p><br /></p><p><b>I inherited these two solid silver Peranakan nyonya belts when my grandmother died in 2011. </b></p><p><br /></p><p>They&#039;re family heirlooms passed down through four generations. </p><p><br /></p><p>The big one originally belonged to my great-grandmother. And the skinny one was my grandmother&#039;s. </p><p><br /></p><p>The first belt is from ca. 1890-1920. The second belt is ca. 1930. </p><p><br /></p><p>They were manufactured by Peranakan (also called &#039;Straits Chinese&#039;) jewelers in the British Straits Settlements (Malaya and Singapore) back during the heyday of the British Empire. These things are beyond rare. I&#039;ve only seen a few examples online, and all the other examples I&#039;ve seen are in museums. </p><p><br /></p><p>The only way you own these things is if you&#039;re lucky enough to buy one, or if like me, you were lucky enough to have inherited them from a relative. </p><p><br /></p><p>These things are irreplaceable to me. </p><p><br /></p><p>When gran died, I had no idea that she had anything like this. Then a few years back I went to Malaya for a family wedding. To kill time, my father took me to the local Peranakan museums all around Malaya and Singapore. And he pointed to this belt, in a museum (I took a picture of it): </p><p><br /></p><p><img src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xaf1/t31.0-8/10620321_1531350837123397_3186190426455723928_o.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /> </p><p><br /></p><p>...and he goes: </p><p><br /></p><p>&quot;Y&#039;know, grandma has a belt just like that one&quot;. </p><p><br /></p><p>I was dumbstruck, simply because they&#039;re so rare, and we have so few heirlooms in our family! (And certainly nothing of value). </p><p><br /></p><p>I asked him how he knew this. He said when the old family home was abandoned in the 1970s or 80s, my aunt took all the old junk from the house before it was demolished. And among them were gran&#039;s two silver belts. He visited my aunt, weedled the belts out of her hands (she didn&#039;t want them anyway), and brought them home to Australia. </p><p><br /></p><p>I begged my dad for a year before he finally agreed to give them to me![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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