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.