Silverwork · Mapuche
Chaway
Silver earrings, among the most widespread forms of Mapuche jewellery, worked from coin silver by specialist smiths.
Form
Chaway are earrings, most often silver, in a range of documented forms, plates, discs and trapezoids among them. With the trarilonko, the trapelakucha and the tüpu, they complete the silver ensemble of festive dress recorded in museum collections and in the 19th-century photographic record.
Like the rest of rütran, most surviving examples date to the ethnographic period, c. 1880–1910, worked from coin silver by rütrafe. Silver marked standing and care: the ensemble was wealth worn, kept and passed on.
Continuity
Contemporary silversmiths continue and renew the form, chaway are made, worn and taught today, from Wallmapu to the cities. The craft is a living tradition with a museum record, not a museum tradition with survivors.
A note on what we don't publish
Specific pieces belong to specific makers, wearers and communities; we describe documented forms without assigning symbolic readings.