Silver Pin Set

This is a set of silver pins from Bolivia from ca. 1930 that are used to fasten women’s garments. The two large pins in this set are known as tupus in Quechua. Typically, women wore two tupus to fasten a rectangular cloth that wraps around the body at the shoulder. The third, smaller pin, known as a ttipqui secured a shoulder cloth, or mantle. Often the word tupu is used to refer to all three, and complete sets of these three pins are rare. Tupus date back to at least 300 BCE on the central coast of Peru, but they use throughout all of the Andean region (Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina).