Ethiopian Jewelry is one of the most incredible arts in East Africa. Completely different from the colorful beads from West Africa, Ethiopian pieces are mostly worked on silver or gold. They include also little wood pieces and the quality of silver varies from one to other according to their price. Normally, the models are copied from ancient jewelry pieces that were used as part of traditional ceremonies as marriages. I saw lots of comments about Ethiopian necklaces as part of an amulet costume. But, as you see, lots of information on the internet are very erroneous. Ethiopians are christians, profoundly, and they don't use amulets as other (most of) countries of Africa do. So, check out and go back to books instead of wikipedia because there are so many things so wrong there...
Back to the piece that I draw today, it is a typical telsum necklace, but it has little silver beads instead a cord as is normally linked, which make it so beautiful. Telsum is a type of bead that is used in many different arrangements in necklaces and normally responds to triangles or rectangles. I will say that some pieces are very close to old hebrew traditional jewelry and it is not strange because Ethiopia has a christianism very close to judaism, having had a small population of jews that flew up to Israel in the late 70's. Yes you can tell all that in these beautiful necklace. I used colored pencils today. Hope you enjoy it!