Lima, Lambayeque, Cusco… The 15-day trip in the company of Carole Fraresso and the other participants takes you to museums filled with sumptuous collections of headdresses, breastplates, helmets, nose jewels that survived the looting of the royal tombs of the lord of Sipan or the lady of Cao, the Peruvian Tutankhamun…

The nose ornaments in this exhibition are nothing short of sumptuous! Whether with pendants, crab-shaped, bimetal, rounded, hammered, these decorations either stand alone or form part of majestic ensembles. They’re sometimes so big that they mask almost the entire face! “These were important jewels in pre-Inca cultures. In 2006 , they discovered 42 of them in the tomb of the Lady of Cao*, sovereign of the Moche civilization. But until now, they haven’t been the subject of any scientific study,” says Carole Fraresso, the exhibition’s curator. Dating back several millennia BC, these nose ornaments herald the ultra-contemporary fashion for face jewelry.

*Discover this tomb during the trip to Peru organized with Carole Fraresso and TFJP, next October.

This spectacular pair of XXL creoles in recycled gold or silver by Motché is a replica of a precolombian Chimu piece dating from 1000 – 1470 A.D.

For all lovers of pre-Columbian culture be sure not to miss the specialist on the subject, Carole Fraresso’s next talk. This French expert in pre-Columbian art will take us through the worlds of the Chavin, Vicus and Mochica goldsmiths, all of whom were considered as the “jewelers of the gods”, as exemplified by the extraordinary funerary ornaments at the Larco Museum in Lima.

February 4^th at 10:30 am at the Maison des Amériques Latines, Paris.