Over the last thirty years, the silver jewelry of the Tuareg has gained increasing recognition in Europe and America as missionaries, aid workers, Peace Corps volunteers, and tourists visited Mali, Niger, and southern Algeria. They often returned with souvenirs and, on occasion, sufficient quantities of jewelry to sell. Tuareg inadan (male smiths) have also occasionally traveled to the West to sell their jewelry and have established commercial relationships with "ethnic" jewelry shops in some Western cities (especially Paris and New York).
Tuareg jewelry has been the subject of numerous exhibitions in France, Germany, Belgium, and Spain, such as "Touaregs" at the Musee de l'Homme (1993), "Touareg" at the Musee royal de l'Afrique centrale, Tervuren (1994), and "Tuareg, Nomades del desierto" exhibited at several museums in Spain under the sponsorship of Fundacion "la Ciaxa" (2001). Tuareg jewelry, leather and wood objects, and other pieces such as camel saddles have entered the collections of several museums, such as the Musee d'ethnographie, Neuchatel; Musee du Quai Branly, Paris; Bardo Museum, Algiers; and UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History. Jewelry has also been the subject of books and articles over the last three decades (Creyaufmuller 1983, Gabus 1982, Gottler 1989, Loughran 1996, Mikelsen 1976, Rasmussen 1997a) and is a significant component of the upcoming exhibition "Art of Being Tuareg: Sahara Nomads in a Modern World" (UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, October 15, 2006-February 26, 2007; the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, May 30-September 2, 2007; and the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, October 10, 2007-January 27, 2008).
The Tuareg are a loose confederation of groups of pastoral nomads, settled agriculturists and, today, city dwellers, who speak a Berber language known as Tamasheq or Tamachek. They live in southern Algeria and are most numerous in the eastern region of Mali and southern Niger. The four main groups of Tuareg are Ahaggar, Tasile-n-Ajjer, Adrar des Ifoghas, and Air (Nicolaisen 1963, Nicolaisen and Nicolaisen 1997). While there is considerable variation among these groups, the social groupings--often referred to as castes in the literature--of the nobles (ihaggaren or imajeren) dominate political organizations. These nobles are the descendants of the camel breeders who, in the first millennia AD, dominated the earlier vassal groups of goat breeders known as imrad. The nobles, who controlled the caravan trade routes, undertook raids for camels and sometimes took slaves (iklan) from the south. Other sub-Saharan peoples, izeggaren, who were settled agriculturists, provided part of their crops to the nobles in return for protection. Two other social groups had special relationships to the nobles and other Tuareg. One was the inselemen, Islamic teachers who achieved their status through training and religious practice. The other was the artists or smiths known as inadan (sg. enad), who are the main focus of this essay. (See Keenan 1977, Nicolaisen 1963, and Nicolaisen and Nicolaisen 1997 for additional historic and anthropological background.)
Since the peace treaties ending the Tuareg rebellion against the governments of Mali and Niger of the late 1980s to mid 1990s, there have been numerous developments that have taken Tuareg jewelry much further into the global marketplace. This essay will focus on two different dynamics--one of the Koumama family of Agadez and their international partnerships, and the other of the French fashion empire Hermes and its relationship with a guild called A l'Atelier, formed in Agadez by Jean-Yves Brizot. These two enterprises illustrate very different approaches to the design, financing, production, and marketing of Tuareg silver jewelry. The Koumama family exemplifies Tuareg inadan actively taking their wares into the global market place. A l'Atelier and Hermes represent more typical Western commercial enterprises seeking new sources of inspiration and production.
The Koumama Family
Born in the first decade of the twentieth century, Mohamed Koumama was raised in the Air region of northern Niger (Fig. 2). He was a young man during the French colonization of the region and was subject to the same pressures of the changing social and political environment as the other nomadic Tuareg. (1) Mohamed Koumama apprenticed to his inadan (smith) father, from whom he learned woodcarving and metalworking. While still young, his talents were well recognized within his region, and he pursued opportunities to advance his skills and reputation. He married three times. His first wife, Shitna, who died in the late 1960s, was a tinadan (female smith), who in this case specialized in leather working. His second wife died after bearing one child, and subsequently Mohamed married Hadjita, who survives him today. Mohamed, who died in 2004, fathered fourteen children, of whom twelve survived, and all of them were apprenticed and trained to become inadan or tinadan (Fig. 3).