Chakana: Inca cross pendant (22k gold)

Anyone who has traveled to Peru, especially to visit the Inca remains, has seen the pattern of Chakana ("Tawa Chakana" in Quechua) during his journey.

This square cross is a symbol of Inca culture that can be found both on ancient textiles, painted on ceramics and carved on secular walls.

Symbolizing the Southern Cross, it has a cosmological and religious meaning, it says a lot about the conception of the Inca world.

Inca cross also called Chakana having served as a model for this making

As I have been traveling in Peru in 2007, I went to Cusco among many other places and enjoyed the discovery of Inca culture. That's why I am particularly excited to propose Peruvian jewelry on the shop and making this kind of typical Inca cross symbol through our service of custom made jewelry.

By the time, we had the opportunity of making a wide range of Chakana cross in different styles as shown here:

 This kind of Chakana cross pendant are available here

We will show you hereafter how is made such a pendant in our workshop.

If you need a quote for your personalized project of Chakana cross pendant, feel free to contact us through our online form here.

Creation of a 22 karat gold Inca cross

Our client, fascinated by the Inca culture, wanted a 22k gold Chakana pendant.

In order to provide us with good quality gold, we supplied ourselves in the form of official gold coins minted by the Bank of Mexico.

This gold is 90% pure, that means 21,6 karat purity. So we refine it to obtain pure gold (24 k gold) first and then make 22 karat gold which is 91,67% in purity.

Mexican 90% pure gold coin, its weight is 16,65 grams and contains 15 grams of 24k gold

You can appreciate the difference of gold color with this 24-karat gold nugget

Small pendant of 10x10 mm

The difficulty of the work lays in the small size of the pendant, which made handling difficult.

Indeed, this Inca cross pendant measures only 10x10 mm for 1mm thick, giving us a total finished weight of only 1.6 grams.

For this work, a 22-karat nugget of gold is laminated to obtain a plate which is then cut with the saw to bring out the contours of the Inca cross.

This plate is then pierced with the central hole and the small hole used to pass the bail of the pendant.

You can notice the pendant is all flat

We let you admire the result of the finished pendant.

Particularly noteworthy is the yellow reflection of solid gold much warmer than gold jewelry of 18 or 14 carats.

Large pendant of 20x20 mm

This kind of pendant can also be made larger, 20x20mm or even 25x25 mm and with a curved face giving more light reflection to the eyes, as shown hereunder.Check on this picture the curved surface of the Chakana cross made hammering the inner face of the pendant set on a curved surface, as shown below.

This short video shows the different steps of making the pendant after having cut the Inca cross in the gold plate: 

Other designs of Chakana cross made in our jewelry workshop

Inca cross with abalone inlay

More information :

• Our publication about Gold Jewelry
• Check our service of custom made jewelry online
• See our collection of gold pendants
• Solid gold Inca earrings
• 18k gold Hunab Ku symbol pendant
• 18k gold earrings for girl
• Make your own custom jewelry online
• Aztec design patterns