The Jewelers Art

by Katherine
Macfarlane
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ZIONSVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY
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The
Jeweler s
Art by Katherine Nell Macfarlane
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Macfarlane, Katherine Nell.

The jeweler's art / by Katherine Nell Macfarlane.
p. cm. — (Eye on art)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59018-984-9 (hardcover)
1. Jewelry—History. I. Title.
NK7306.M33 2007
739.2709—dc22
2007007804
ISBN-10:1-59018-984-1
Printed in the United States of America
Foreword.5
Introduction.8
Jewelry Through the Ages
Chapter One.10
Ancient Times (to 500 b.c.)
Chapter Two.21
The Greeks and the Romans (500 b.c. to a.d. 500)
Chapter Three.32
The Early Middle Ages (a.d. 500 to 1000)
Chapter Four . . . ..44

The Romanesque and Gothic Eras (a.d. 1000 to 1450)
Chapter Five.54
The Renaissance (a.d. 1450 to 1600)
Chapter Six.63
Baroque and Rococo (a.d. 1600 to 1815)
Chapter Seven. 26
The Victorians and Edwardians (a.d. 1815 to 1915)
Chapter Eight. 39
The Modern Jeweler’s Art
Notes..
Glossary.104
For Further Reading.106
Index.103
Picture Credits.HI
About the Author. 112
Art has no other purpose than to brush aside... everything that veils
reality from us in order to bring us face to face with reality itself A
—French philosopher Henri-Louis Bergson
S ome thirty-one thousand years ago, early humans painted

strikingly sophisticated images of horses, bison, rhinoceros¬
es, bears, and other animals on the walls of a cave in southern
France. The meaning of these elaborate pictures is unknown,
although some experts speculate that they held ceremonial sig¬
nificance. Regardless of their intended purpose, the Chauvet-
Pont-d’Arc cave paintings represent some of the first known
expressions of the artistic impulse.
From the Paleolithic era to the present day, human beings
have continued to create works of visual art. Artists have devel¬
oped painting, drawing, sculpture, engraving, and many other
techniques to produce visual representations of landscapes, the
human form, religious and historical events, and coundess other
subjects. The artistic impulse also finds expression in glass, jew¬
elry, and new forms inspired by new technology. Indeed, judg¬
ing by humanity’s prolific artistic output throughout history, one
must conclude that the compulsion to produce art is an inherent
aspect of being human, and the results are among humanity’s
greatest cultural achievements: masterpieces such as the archi¬
tectural marvels of ancient Greece, Michelangelo’s perfectly ren¬
dered statue David, Vincent van Gogh’s visionary painting
Starry Night, and endless other treasures.
The creative impulse serves many purposes for society. At its
most basic level, art is a form of entertainment or the means for
a satisfying or pleasant aesthetic experience. But art’s true power
lies not in its potential to entertain and delight but in its ability
5
to enlighten, to reveal the truth, and by doing so to uplift the
human spirit and transform the human race.
One of the primary functions of art has been to serve reli¬
gion. For most of Western history, for example, artists were paid
by the church to produce works with religious themes and sub¬
jects. Art was thus a tool to help human beings transcend mun¬
dane, secular reality and achieve spiritual enlightenment. One of
the best-known, and largest-scale, examples of Christian reli¬
gious art is the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican in Rome. In 1508
Pope Julius II commissioned Italian Renaissance artist
Michelangelo to paint the chapel’s vaulted ceiling, an area of 640
square yards (535 sq. m). Michelangelo spent four years on scaf¬
folding, his neck craned, creating a panoramic fresco of some
three hundred human figures. His paintings depict Old
Testament prophets and heroes, sibyls of Greek mythology, and
nine scenes from the Book of Genesis, including the Creation of
Adam, the Fall of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and
the Flood. The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is considered one of
the greatest works of Western art and has inspired the awe of
countless Christian pilgrims and other religious seekers. As
eighteenth-century German poet and author Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe wrote, “Until you have seen this Sistine Chapel, you
can have no adequate conception of what man is capable of.”
In addition to inspiring religious fervor, art can serve as a
force for social change. Artists are among the visionaries of any
culture. As such, they often perceive injustice and wrongdoing
and confront others by reflecting what they see in their work.
One classic example of art as social commentary was created in
May 1937, during the brutal Spanish civil war. On May 1
Spanish artist Pablo Picasso learned of the recent attack on the
small Basque village of Guernica by German airplanes allied
with fascist forces led by Francisco Franco. The German pilots
had used the village for target practice, a three-hour bombing
that killed sixteen hundred civilians. Picasso, living in Paris,
channeled his outrage over the massacre into his painting
Guernica, a black, white, and gray mural that depicts dismem¬
bered animals and fractured human figures whose faces are con-
6 The Jeweler’s Art

torted in agonized expressions. Initially, critics and the public
condemned the painting as an incoherent hodgepodge, but the
work soon came to be seen as a powerful antiwar statement and
remains an iconic symbol of the violence and terror that domi¬
nated world events during the remainder of the twentieth cen¬
tury.
The impulse to create art—whether painting animals with
crude pigments on a cave wall, sculpting a human form from
marble, or commemorating human tragedy in a mural—thus
serves many purposes. It offers an entertaining diversion, nour¬
ishes the imagination and the spirit, decorates and beautifies the
world, and chronicles the age. But underlying all these functions
is the desire to reveal that which is obscure—to illuminate, clar¬
ify, and perhaps ennoble. As Picasso himself stated, “The pur¬
pose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.”
The Eye on Art series is intended to assist readers in under¬
standing the various roles of art in society. Each volume offers
an in-depth exploration of a major artistic movement, medium,
figure, or profession. All books in the series are beautifully illus¬
trated with full-color photographs and diagrams. Riveting nar¬
rative, clear technical explanation, informative sidebars, fully
documented quotes, a bibliography, and a thorough index all
provide excellent starting points for research and discussion.
With these features, the Eye on Art series is a useful introduc¬
tion to the world of art—a world that can offer both insight and
inspiration.
Foreword 7
Introduction
Jewelry Through
the Ages
S elf-adornment is a basic human instinct. The most primitive

people decorate their bodies with paint, feathers, flowers,
and shells, weave and embroider their clothing in colorful pat¬
terns, and sew ornaments onto it.
When human technology advanced to shaping metals and
colorful stones, jewelry made from these materials became a
favored form of adornment because it was both beautiful and
durable. It was also regarded as something of value because it
required rare materials and special skills to make. In addition, it
became a mark of prestige, with complex political, religious, and
magical significance. The jewels of the Egyptian pharaohs were
not mere personal adornments; they were the insignia of a god
on earth, just as the brilliant regalia of the Byzantine emperors
marked them as God’s earthly viceroy. Medieval Christians
kissed their bishop’s ring as a sign of reverence, and lords and
ladies wore golden reliquaries set with precious stones in the
hope of divine protection. So powerful was the fascination of
jewels that precious stones themselves acquired magical prop¬
erties for good or ill. Until the 1800s it was not unusual for laws
to be handed down governing which ranks in society could wear
what sorts of jewelry.
Wearing jewelry for personal adornment and pleasure was a
relatively late development. The Greeks were the first society
known to make precious ornaments a privilege of the common
man (and woman) as well as of the ruler and priest, and if the
discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum are any indication, the
Romans followed suit. This democratic attitude was revived in
the Renaissance and became widespread from the 1800s
onward. Pieces of jewelry came to have great personal and sen¬
timental meaning for those who wore them. Today, wearing jew¬
elry is everyone’s right and everyone’s pleasure, and jewelry is a
beautiful and valuable means of expressing one’s individual tastes
and personality.
During the
Renaissance, women
freely adorned their
bodies, and even
their hair, with
jewelry.
Jewelry Through the Ages 9

Ancient Times
(to 500 b.c.)
T reasures uncovered by archaeologists can tell a great deal

about the jewelry-making techniques of ancient peoples.
They show what kind of metals they worked and how they
worked them. They show whether they worked precious and
semiprecious stones, and which ones. They show whether their
stonework was crude or elegantly finished and whether their use
of the stones was simple or elaborate. Sometimes they even
reveal what sort of tools the jewelers used. It is fortunate for
archaeologists that two ancient civilizations, the Sumerians and
the Egyptians, were firm believers in taking the comforts and
pleasures of this life, including abundant jewelry, into the next
one. Sumerians and Egyptians were buried wearing the jewelry
they treasured in life. It is also fortunate that in at least the two
cases of Queen Puabi of Ur and King Tutankhamen of Egypt,
archaeologists uncovered tombs undisturbed and unlooted by
the tomb robbers of ancient and modern times.
Dressed to Die: The Treasure of

Queen Puabi
Queen Puabi was laid to rest in the so-called Royal Tombs of Ur
sometime during the Third Dynasty of Ur (2112 to 2004 B.C.).
10
Ur was one of several city-states that made up Sumer, an ancient
civilization in Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq. Sir Charles Leonard
Woolley, at the head of an expedition sponsored by the British
Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, excavated the city
of Ur, including its royal tombs, between 1922 and 1934. He
had the great good fortune to uncover the queen’s unrifled tomb
and its extraordinary riches.
Sumerian Jewelry Making

The treasures found in Ur’s royal tombs show that even as early
as 2000 B.C., the Sumerians knew how to render gold and other
metals, including silver, and had mastered certain basic metal¬ Examples of
working skills. To judge from archaeological finds, Sumerian Sumerian stone and
metal crafters preferred working in gold rather than silver. They beadwork, using
probably did so not because they considered gold more precious gold, lapiz lazuli,
than silver but because gold occurs naturally in pure form, either carnelian, and silver.
in veins (lodes) or in deposits as nuggets and gold dust in rivers
and streams, whereas silver has to be refined (freed from miner¬
al compounds by a process of melting the ore). Gold is also soft¬
er than silver and therefore is easier to work.
Two qualities of gold make it especially suitable for simple
metalworking: It is malleable (it can be hammered into thin
sheets with nothing more complicated than a heavy mallet on a
flat, solid work surface), and it is ductile (it can be drawn or
rolled into slender wires). Sumerian goldsmiths made great use
of both sheet gold and gold wire.
Once gold is hammered into a thin sheet, it can be put to
various uses. The simplest is to cut it into long strips or ribbons.
Sheet gold can also be cut into more complex shapes (leaves,
flowers, animals), which can then be engraved by using one of
two techniques: chasing, in which details are pressed into the
metal from the front with a sharp stylus; or repousse, in which
the metal is pressed or hammered from behind either against a
soft material (wax or leather) or into a mold, or die, to form a
larger, raised detail on the front. Sheet gold can also be ham¬
mered over a wooden core to form either a hollow object or a
metal casing for the core. Large and elaborate items were made
in several pieces and soldered together, using an alloy that melt¬
ed at a lower temperature than the gold. Gold, silver, and elec-
trum (an alloy of gold and silver) were also hammered into small
three-dimensional sculptures.
One of the most spectacular examples of Sumerian sheet-
gold working is the Golden Helmet of Mescalamdug, which
Woolley discovered in the simple grave of that great prince. As
Woolley describes it,
It was a helmet of beaten gold made to fit low over the

head with cheek pieces to protect the face, and it was
in the form of a wig, the locks of hair hammered up in
relief, the individual hairs shown by delicate engraved
lines. Parted down the middle, the hair covers the head
in flat wavy tresses and is bound round with a twisted
fillet; behind it is tied into a little chignon, and below

the fillet hangs in rows of formal curls about the ears,
which are rendered in high relief and are pierced so as
not to interfere with hearing; similar curls on the cheek
pieces represent whiskers; round the edge of the metal
are small holes for the laces which secured inside it a
padded cap, of which some traces yet remained.1
The helmet as a whole was most likely hammered into, or

over, a mold. It was probably made in several pieces, which were
then soldered together. The details of the hair and fillet were
added by chasing.
Besides being masterful metalworkers, the Sumerians were
skilled at stonecutting, stone carving, and bead drilling, using
lapis lazuli, carnelian, and various kinds of agate. While lapis
lazuli, a dark blue stone often starred with specks of iron pyrite,
is fairly soft (which may account for its popularity with
Sumerian jewelry makers), red-orange carnelian and agate,
which are forms of quartz, are quite hard and more difficult to
work. It is not known what sorts of tools the Sumerians used for
bead making, but they were probably similar to those found in
Egypt during the same period: polishing wheels and drilling
tools of flint and perhaps copper.
The Sumerians also excelled at inlay work, in which small
pieces of stone or other materials are glued into a recessed back¬
ground, rather like mosaic. Complex inlays, done in shell, lapis
lazuli, red stone, and sometimes gold and silver, can be seen on
the Great Lyre of Ur and the so-called Standard of Ur. Neither
is a piece of jewelry (one is a musical instrument, the other a hol¬
low wooden box whose real purpose is unknown), though they
are masterpieces of the inlayer’s art. Sumerian inlay artists
apparently had discovered neither the cements used by later arti¬
sans nor the ability to make metal settings for the inlay work.
Inlay was held in place with bitumen (tar).
Queen Puabi’s Diadem

Queen Puabi’s diadem, or ornamental crown, was a masterpiece
of the Sumerian jeweler’s art. To quote Woolley, the diadem
Ancient Times (to 500 b.c.) 13

consists of “a broad gold ribbon festooned in loops round the
hair ...; over this came three wreaths, the lowest hanging down
over the forehead, of plain gold ring pendants, the second of
beech leaves, the third of long willow leaves in sets of three with
gold flowers whose petals were of blue and white inlay; all these
were strung on triple chains of lapis and carnelian beads.”2
The willow leaves of the topmost wreath are cut from sheet
gold, with red-orange carnelian beads suspended from their tips.
Between the leaf clusters are threaded lapis lazuli beads and
repousse gold rosettes, their petals inlaid alternately with lapis
lazuli and a white, enamel-like material.
The sheet-gold beech leaves of the second wreath are deli¬
cately engraved to show their veins and also tipped with car-
Queen Puabi
^T'he queen was a small woman, just under 5 feet (1,5m) tall. She was
1 no longer young, perhaps even elderly by the standards of her peo¬
ple, in her late thirties or early forties. She outlived her lord and hus¬
band—Charles Leonard Woolley notes that the king’s burial was dis¬
turbed to accommodate hers. A cylinder seal found beside her body
identifies her as “Puabi, the Queen.”
She was laid to rest as befit a great queen. In addition to her diadem,
she was adorned in a shimmering cape of beads: gold and polished agate,
carnelian, and lapis lazuli. She wore a ring on every finger, three bead
necklaces of semiprecious stones, and a belt fashioned of gold, carnelian,
and lapis lazuli beads. She was buried with her household around her: five
guards with bronze daggers, four teamsters to drive her ox-drawn funer¬
al sledge, her master of the wardrobe, and ten handmaidens in golden
jewels and headdresses, bearing musical instruments to entertain their
lady in the hereafter.
nelian beads. Between the leaves are
spacers of long cylindrical lapis beads
and small flat carnelian beads. The
fringe of gold hoops is suspended from
a band of lapis lazuli and carnelian
beads. On either side, below the wreaths
and the gold hoops, the gold ribbon is
draped in three graceful loops on either
side, framing the queens face and hair.
Puabi’s hair was secured in back
with what Woolley described as a gold¬
en Spanish comb, from which spring
seven stems. Each stem ends in a six-
petaled, golden repousse flower, the
center of which is inlaid with lapis
lazuli. The Queen’s head ornaments are
completed with a pair of large golden
double-crescent-moon earrings.
The Sumerian techniques of jewel¬
ry making as well as the materials were
spread by caravans carrying rich stones
and metals throughout the Middle East. The Egyptians learned This ornamental
a great deal from the Sumerians about working gold and silver crown of a Sumerian
and precious stones, and what they learned they added to, to an lady of the court,
extraordinary degree. discovered during
the excavations at
A Boy-King’s Regalia: The Ur, is very similar in
nature to Queen
Tomb of Tutankhamen Puabi’s diadem.
Tutankhamen, pharaoh from 1332 to 1322 B.C., came to the
throne as a child and did not reign long enough to make much
of an impact on history. Perhaps because of his insignificance,
his tomb lay undisturbed until 1922, when an archaeologist
and Egyptologist named Howard Carter, excavating in the
Valley of the Kings, discovered it. Carter and his sponsor,
George Herbert, known as Lord Carnarvon, partially opened
the doorway into the tomb and peered in. As Carter described
the experience,

At first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from
the chamber causing the candle to flicker, but present¬
ly, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of
the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange
animals, statues, and gold—everywhere the glint of
gold . . . when Lord Carnarvon . . . inquired anxiously
“can you see anything?” it was all I could do to get out
the words “Yes, wonderful things.”3
These “wonderful things” that Carter and Lord Carnarvon

had discovered were among the finest and most beautiful exam¬
ples of Egyptian jewelry making.
Egyptian Jewelry Making

Archaeological discoveries show that even as early as the
beginning of the dynastic period, around 3000 B.C., the
Egyptians were skilled metalworkers. They had mastered the
art of making sheet gold and gold foil, and they made gold
wire that they used in various ways, including winding it into
a spiral to make lozenge-shaped beads. They also made beads
by pressing sheet gold into a hemispherical mold, then solder¬
ing the two halves into a hollow round bead. A bracelet found
in the tomb of Djer, who ruled sometime between 3000 and
2750 B.C., has beads of this sort. Another bracelet from Djer’s
tomb, as described by Hans Wolfgang Muller and Eberhard
Thiem in Gold of the Pharaohs, has a rosette “in the shape of the
pistil of a lotus flower ... a masterpiece of early goldsmiths’
work-The outer corona ... of the rosette would have been
made by pressing the gold into a die.”4 Such molds could even
be made from natural objects. A necklace found at Nag ed-
Deir is made of gold spiral shells that “may have been pro¬
duced by taking a plaster impression from a real shell and
pressing the gold foil into the hollow forma.”5
Even at this early time the Egyptians understood the
process of casting, in which molten metal is poured into a mold.
A third bracelet from Djer’s burial is made of alternating plaques
of gold and turquoise. “The regular shape of each gold falcon

What Is Faience?
A uch of the beadwork and inlay in Egyptian jewelry were made of a

U VAmaterial called faience. Faience, as used by the Egyptians, is a
ceramic made almost entirely of ground quartz. Colorants of various
sorts were added either directly to the quartz paste or in a glaze. When
the object was fired, it emerged with a dazzling color: blue green, car-
nelian red, soft yellow, cobalt blue, or violet. Faience was also used to
make small ceramic objects, such as the Metropolitan Museum’s beloved
mascot, William the Hippopotamus.
indicates that they are casts,”6 according to Muller and Thiem.

To create these flat, one-sided plaques, the goldsmiths probably
used a simple method of casting in which they poured molten
gold into a form that was either stamped into a soft substance
like sand, or made of a substance like fired clay that could be
used over and over. Later, objects done in the round (three-
dimensional), such as small statuary and elements attached to
larger metalworks, were cast using the lost wax method: A
model of the object was made in wax, then covered in ceramic
materia] and fired, causing the wax to melt and run out of the
mold. Then molten gold was poured into the hollow mold;
when it had cooled and hardened, the mold was removed.
The Egyptians were also skilled at the kind of enamelwork
known as cloisonne, in which fine wire is soldered to a metal
background to form the outline of a design. Enamel “paste” of
various colors is then applied in the spaces outlined by the wire,
and the object is fired to bond the enamel to the metal.
From the earliest period, the Egyptians were skilled bead
makers. Muller and Thiem remark on the large numbers of

King Tutankhamen
O f course there were rumors of foul play. The deceased was only nine¬
teen years old, and a king and a god besides. He went to his grave
with a crushed chest and a broken leg. Of course, he might have been
killed in battle; a pharaoh was expected to fight alongside his troops. Or
it may have been a simple case of a “car” accident—driving too fast, as
teenagers will, in a light chariot like the ones found in his tomb.-However
he died, he was given a royal farewell. He took with him, besides his char¬
iots and armchairs and gameboards and model boats and linen under¬
wear and packets of roast duck, an incredible hoard of jewelry, the finest
of the jeweler’s art for his time. When Howard Carter and his crew
opened Tutankhamen's innermost solid gold coffin, they found the king’s
head and shoulders covered by a magnificent burial mask, also of solid
gold and decorated with exquisite inlay work.
beads of semiprecious stone such as lapis lazuli, purple amethyst,

turquoise, and carnelian that were shaped, carved, polished, and
drilled: “Their manufacture presupposes the existence of special¬
ized workshops in the settlements of the Nile Valley.”7 The
remains of a bead factory from around 2000 B.C. proves that
bead makers could achieve impressive effects using relatively
simple flint and bronze tools. The Egyptians excelled particular¬
ly at weaving tube-shaped beads of semiprecious stone, glass,
and faience (a ceramic material) into the characteristic wide
“collar” necklace so typical of Egyptian adornment.
The Egyptians were also masters of stonecutting and polish¬
ing. Tutankhamen’s treasure contains many examples of beauti¬
fully cut and polished cabochons (convex, unfaceted gems)
which were set into jewelry with a bezel, a metal strip surround¬
ing the stone. They also produced beautiful carved gems, such as

scarab beetles (a symbol of the sun and eternal life), that were set
into jewelry.
Most of all, the Egyptians excelled at inlay work. In the ear¬
lier technique, the goldsmith used a chisel to gouge out a channel
that fit the inlays precisely, and the cut stone was then cement¬
ed into place. Inlayers used semiprecious stone, glass, or faience.
Later, channels were made by soldering narrow wires or strips of
metal to a background to form a raised pattern, into which the
inlay was cemented. Many beautiful examples of inlay work were
found in Tutankhamen’s tomb. One of the loveliest is a winged
scarab pectoral (pendant worn on the chest). The scarab itself is
carved from lapis lazuli; it is supporting a sun disk of carnelian,
and its wings are inlaid with glass and semiprecious stones.
Tutankhamen’s Burial Mask

The mask that covered the face and shoulders of Tutankhamen’s
mummy captures the imagination of all who see it. The twenty-
two-pound mask was hammered out of heavy sheet gold,
although individual elements, such as the vulture and serpent
King Tutankhamen’s
burial mask is inlaid
with semiprecious
stones, faience, and
glass.
goddesses on the royal headband, were cast, probably by the lost
wax method. The mask is an idealized portrait of the young
king, exquisitely modeled and inlaid with semiprecious stones,
faience, and glass.
The royal headcloth and Tutankhamen’s ceremonial false
beard are inlaid with blue glass. The vulture goddess on the
headband has a beak of glass, and the cobra goddess’s head is
made of blue faience. The cobra’s body is inlaid with lapis lazuli,
carnelian, quartz, and turquoise glass. The king’s wide collar is
inlaid with semiprecious stones carved to resemble the tube
beads used in wide necklaces: deep blue lapis lazuli, red quartz,
and green feldspar. It is edged with an ornamental row of cloi¬
sonne enamel lotus-bud drops.
The Mesopotamians and Egyptians had perfected the basic
metalworking and stoneworking techniques of jewelry making.
The richness and formal quality of the jewelry, however, indi¬
cates that it was the adornment of great nobles and god-kings.
The goldsmith’s skills would be refined and perfected over the
next thousand years, as jewelry became less the prerogative of
royalty and more the adornment of everyday life.

T he Greeks and the Romans mark the beginning of truly his¬
torical times. A good deal of both written and pictorial
information exists about their taste in jewelry which is fortunate
because relatively little physical evidence exists aside from valu¬
ables that were buried in out-of-the-way places like southern
Russia, or jewels that were buried where looters and amateur
archaeologists could not get at them, as in the Roman cities
buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Anything easy to lay
hands on was carried off by invading barbarians, broken up or
melted down for its precious metals and stones, remade into
jewelry of later times, or casually destroyed.
Greek and Roman Jewelry

Making
The Greeks were the master jewelry makers of antiquity. They
refined the techniques discovered by earlier civilizations and cre¬
ated sophisticated and delicate jewelry that would not look out
of place in a showcase at Tiffany’s. To quote Elizabeth Stasin-
opoulos, an archaeologist with the National Archaeological
Museum of Athens,
The Mesopotamians and the Egyptians had developed
advanced metalworking techniques long before the
Greeks, and so it is natural that the Greeks learned
these from them. However, as in other forms of art so
in metalworking, the craftsmen selected those elements
they wanted and quickly adapted them to their own
aesthetic perceptions, creating decorative themes that
far outshone the commonplace repetitive designs of the
artifacts of the East.8
The Romans borrowed liberally from the Greeks (and liber¬

ally borrowed Greek goldsmiths as well, marching them off into
slavery or enticing them to Rome with the promise of wealthy
clients). They contributed little to the tradition of classical jew¬
elry making but a taste for pearls and colored stones, particular¬
ly carved intaglios and cameos, a trend that actually began
among the Hellenistic Greeks.
Greek Metalworking
Greek jewelry during the classical period (500 to 400 B.C.) tend¬
ed to be modest and restrained. This may have been due to the
Greeks inherent good taste, but, as Guido Gregorietti remarks
in Jewelry Through the Ages, it was “probably due to a shortage of
gold. He adds, During the Classical period, when sculpture
achieved such heights, the minor arts, above all gold work and
jewelry, developed little and were in any case restricted by the
many finance laws which were passed at that time.”9
During the Hellenistic period (after 400 B.C.), following the
conquests of Alexander the Great, the Greeks had access to
abundant sources of gold and precious stones. Influenced by the
wealth and flamboyant tastes of Asia, they made generous use of
the gold and began to explore the possibilities of the precious
stones. Earrings, which in the classical period were modest but¬
tons or florets, might now feature minute statues of Nike, god¬
dess of victory, driving a two-horse chariot, or baskets of fruit
and flowers with pendant acorns or pinecones. A diadem found
at Kerch in southern Russia is adorned with a Herakles knot set

with garnets, sea serpents, a winged Victory, and nine elaborate
gold tassels decorated with florets and garnet beads.
One characteristic of Greek jewelry making in all periods
was a fondness for nature motifs. Many designs were copied
from plants, particularly flowers and leaves. The stylized palmet¬
to leaf and lotus flower, so popular on Greek pottery, were also
used in jewelry, as was the acanthus leaf. One very common style
of necklace, sometimes referred to as the “acorn” necklace, con¬
sisted of a string of acorn-shaped pendants attached to beads or Hellenistic jewelry
a chain; the pendants might also be shaped like stylized that featured little
pinecones, lotus buds, leaves, or fruits. Animal motifs were also statuettes, such as
popular: lions, horses, bulls, rams, dolphins, birds, and bees. this pair of earrings,
Serpentine bracelets were especially popular with both the was common in the
Greeks and the Romans. The serpent in ancient first century.
times had no evil associations; sacred to
Asclepius, it was thought to ward off illness
and injury.
The Greeks surpassed earlier cultures
in metalworking. Unlike the Meso¬
potamians and Egyptians, who made lav¬
ish use of semiprecious and precious
stones, the Greeks concentrated on
skillfully shaping and embellishing
the metal itself. Stasinopoulos says
of them, “Whereas for the
Oriental peoples semi-precious
stones were structural elements of
their jewellery, in Greece emphasis
was placed on modelled decora¬
tion. The jewellers used gold and sil¬
ver ... to fashion diadems, necklaces,
bracelets, earrings and rings of unri¬
valled artistry.”10
In several types of metalworking
the Greeks particularly excelled: cast¬
ing figures in the round; relief (figures
raised above a flat background), both
cast and repousse; chain work and braiding gold wire into mesh;
granulation; and cloisonne. They invented none of these tech¬
niques; all were known to some degree to the Egyptians. But the
Greeks perfected them to an extraordinary degree.
The lost wax method of casting that the Greeks used for
their bronze statuary they also applied, on a much smaller scale,
to gold and silver jewelry. Little statuettes were incorporated
into necklaces and earrings: pert sphinxes with enigmatic smiles,
plump cupids, animals and monsters of all sorts, heads of god¬
desses and grotesques, little winged statues of the god Pan. As
Stasinopoulos explains, where casting in pure gold was prohibi¬
tive, Greek jewelers would cast
a core of silver or copper ... to which very fine gold leaf

was applied, affixed to the surface by simply rolling its
edges or with the help of some adhesive. Another
The Creeks excelled

in many types of
metalworking,
including chains both
large and small. This
painting illustrates a
fine chain hairnet.

method, which required a smaller quantity of gold, was
gilding with mercury. Gold and mercury form a semi¬
fluid amalgam with which the object was covered.
Because mercury has a much lower boiling point than
gold it evaporated on heating, leaving a fine film of
gold on the surface of the object. Silvered jewellery
usually had a copper core. Because the melting point of
silver is much lower than that of copper, objects could
be silvered by dipping them in molten silver. The
method of coating with a mercury amalgam, described
above, was also applied.11
The Greeks used repousse from the beginning. By the clas¬

sical period they had learned to cast intricate bronze dies for
stamping sheet gold. Gold formed in this way was then soldered
together in two halves to create in-the-round hollow beads and
other complex elements, or used as raised, low-relief designs on
flat surfaces. Such low-relief designs were often used in medal¬
lions holding delicate gold and jeweled women’s hairnets. The
Greeks also made regular use of stamping—hammering a pat¬
terned bronze punch into sheet gold against a soft surface such
as leather or sand to make a repeated raised pattern.
Granulation is the technique of soldering tiny gold spheres
or granules or gold dust (powder granulation) to a gold back¬
ground to create designs, or an overall frosted effect as on the
Silenus necklace from Ruvo. Although the Egyptians used gran¬
ulation to some extent, it was perfected by the Greeks and
Etruscans, after which it dwindled away and became a lost art.
Gregorietti speculates that “the granules were probably made by
placing pieces of gold . . . between layers of powdered charcoal
in a crucible. When heated the pieces of gold melted into
minute spheres separated from each other by the charcoal. The
charcoal was then washed away, and the granules graded for size
by passing them over a punched sheet till each slotted into a hole
of its own diameter.”12
The greater mystery is how the Greeks and Etruscans sol¬
dered these minute spheres to each other and to the gold
The Greeks and the Romans (500 b.c. to a.d. 500) 25

background so that the soldering was not visible. The likeliest
theory is that they used a copper compound mixed into a resin
or glue that secured the granulation to the base, which was
then heated; at the proper temperature the resin burned away,
releasing the copper to alloy with the gold and form an on-
the-spot solder.
The chains and gold mesh that the Greeks produced are
very nearly as regular as those made by modern machines. A flat
strip of chain work or braided gold wire was often the base for
the popular “acorn” necklace and was also used in belts, bracelets,
and diadems. Intricate chains attached dangles to earrings and
connected ornaments on necklaces. Heavier chains or thick
tubes of meshwork supported a single pendant or pectoral. Fine
chains were even woven into hairnets.
Greek Enamel Work

Like the Egyptians, the Greeks used cloisonne enamel work to
add color to jewelry, and for the most part preferred it to colored
stones, although they sometimes combined the two with daz¬
zling effect, as in the exquisite coronet from the Tomb of Gold
at Canosa. But they particularly favored patterns of gold wire as
decorative elements in their own right, either soldered to a gold
background or made into openwork designs, a technique known
as filigree.
Greek and Roman Stonework

The Romans, unlike the Greeks, adored colored stones and pre¬
ferred them to enamel, little of which appears in Roman jewel¬
ry. They carried on earlier techniques of polishing beads and
cabochons, although they favored a wider range of stones,
including many we think of as precious. They particularly loved
emeralds and pearls; Pliny the Elder saw Lollia Paulina, wife of
Emperor Caligula, at a private dinner party “covered with emer¬
alds and pearls interlaced alternately and shining all over her
head, hair, ears, neck, and fingers.”13
The Romans readily adopted the Hellenistic taste for carved
stones. Intaglio, in which an image is carved in reverse into the

The Etruscans
he Etruscans were a mysterious people—no one knows where they

came from, and we have only glimmerings of their language, which
resembled neither Creek nor Latin. They arrived in Italy, possibly from
Asia Minor, sometime after 700 B.c. Most of what we know about them
comes from their tombs, which honeycomb the hillsides of Umbria, north
of Rome. They laid their dead away in carved and frescoed chambers
pulsing with joyous energy—feasting and dancing, chariot racing, hunt¬
ing and fishing.
The Etruscan zest for life is reflected in their jewelry. They followed
the Greek fashion for the most part but added an element of their own
exuberance. Necklaces have not one tier of ornaments but several, acorns
and fruit and flowers, satyr heads and winged deities, even polished
agates and amber in finely worked gold settings, all connected by an intri¬
cate web of chains. The Etruscans particularly loved granulation. Lavishly
granulated lions, sphinxes, chimeras, and griffins march on parade on one
golden fibula; fantastic creatures done in powder granulation adorn
another. Etruscan ladies wore gold bracelets stamped with intricate
repousse work, elaborate earrings rich with granulation and filigree and
dangles, and regal gold diadems. The effect must have been dazzling.
A sampling of
gold Etruscan
jewelry.
surface of the stone, was known to the Sumerians, who used it for
cylinder seals; but the Greeks perfected its three-dimensional
quality, creating elegantly naturalistic reverse reliefs for use in
signet rings. Stone carving was considered an art form, and the
names of some of the masters are known. Pliny the Elder men¬
tions “an edict of Alexander the Great forbidding his likeness to
be engraved ... by anyone except Pyrgoteles, who was undoubt¬
edly the most brilliant artist in this field. Next to him in fame
have been Apollonides, Cronius and the man who made the
excellent likeness of Augustus ... which his successors have used
as their seal, namely Dioscurides.”14
The cameo, in which The cameo, in which the image is carved in relief, was a
the image is carved Hellenistic innovation. Although it was common to carve
in relief, was a Greek cameos on single-color stones such as red jasper or chalcedony,
innovation. the finest were made from banded stones such as onyx, carved
so that the lighter figure stood out
against a dark background, as in the
Gonzaga Cameo depicting Nero and
his mother Agrippina.
Greek stone carvers produced
their magnificent effects with very
simple tools, such as sharpened
quartz stones. Pliny notes that “there
is a great difference between one
stone and another in that some can¬
not be engraved with an iron tool
and some only with a blunt iron tool,
although all can be worked with a
diamond point.”15
Some of the finest examples of
Roman jewels, and the most charac¬
teristic, have been found in the exca¬
vations of the resort city of Pompeii,
buried in the eruption of Mt.
Vesuvius in A.D. 79. The people who
kept town houses at Pompeii were
the well-to-do middle class, and

>k-te
^T^he Tovsta Mohyla pectoral was discovered in the kurgan, or burial

X mound, of a Scythian warrior in southern Ukraine. The Scythians
were nomadic horsemen whom the Greeks associated with the Amazons.
Scythian taste in jewelry inclined toward the massive and flamboyant, yet
they had an eye for elegant workmanship, and goldsmiths in the Greek
colonies along the Black Sea catered to their desires.
The spirit of the Tovsta Mohyla pectoral is Scythian, but the work¬
manship is Greek. The topmost of three tiers of figures, in the finest tra¬
dition of Greek naturalism, depicts high-relief vignettes of Scythian daily
life: Two men in Scythian trousers stitch a sheepskin, mares and cows
nurse their young, servants milk sheep. After a second tier featuring birds
and blossoms, the third tier returns to naturalistic, high-relief figures. In
three central groupings, a pair of griffins attack a horse. On one side of
these, a lion and lioness bring down a stag; on the other a similar pair
stalks a boar. Whoever cast the griffins certainly knew his griffins. Their
bodies are lionlike down to the muscled haunches and whippy tails, their
heads are perfect birds of prey, and every feather in their great wings is
engraved with great detail.
;
it*
their homes and their jewelry reflected, better than the lavish
adornments of the imperial family, the tastes of average
Romans.
The Emerald Necklace from

Pompeii
The young woman took refuge near the door in an
interior room of the villa—perhaps planning her escape

into the countryside, away from the pumice and ash
raining down from Mount Vesuvius.
But instead, she was struck down by a surge of
superheated volcanic gases, ash and rock fragments
that brought death almost immediately. The woman
was entombed with her most treasured possessions,
among them a gold and emerald necklace, a hoard of
coins and two gold bracelets shaped like snakes.16
The lady’s necklace was perhaps not so grand as Empress

Lollia Paulina’s parure, but its design was tasteful and elegant.
The base was a wide band of gold mesh onto which bezel-set
rough-cut emeralds and cabochon-cut baroque pearls were
alternately set. The choice of these large, irregular gems seems to
have been intentional. As one admirer observes of the necklace,
“Since the mesh and the clasp are obviously the work of a superb
craftsman, the use of the stones with large simple shapes must
have been deliberate and carefully thought out.” The same
author says of Pompeian jewelry and Roman jewelry generally,
A gold armband in
the form of a snake,
found in the
excavations of
Pompeii in a.d. 79.
She Was Middle-Aged and Homely
^T*hey found her body on the waterfront. No place for a respectable

JL lady of means, but sometimes even a respectable lady of means has
to get out of town in a hurry. She had bundled up her jewelry and was
down on the beach looking for a fast boat out of town when her killer
caught up with her and snuffed out her life. The killer did not bother to
rob the lady, had no interest in her fine gold rings set with green jasper
and a ruby engraved with a strutting bird, her serpent bracelets with glit¬
tering jasper eyes, her delicate pearl earrings.
The lady died in a blast of superheated gas from the eruption of Mt.
Vesuvius in a.d. 79. The rain of volcanic debris that followed buried the
Roman seaside town of Herculaneum and the lady, who would not be
found for more than nineteen hundred years. In one of the most poignant
descriptions of the remains that she is reconstructing, physical anthro¬
pologist Sara Bisel says of the Ring Lady, “She was certainly homely, but
someone cared enough to give her beautiful things.”
Quoted in “After 2,000 Years of Silence, the Dead Do Tell Tales at Vesuvius,” National Geographic, May 1984,
p. 560.
“This taste for openwork and for light, abstract, bubbly forms
characterizes much jewelry found at Pompeii and amounts to a
fashion trend of Imperial times, away from the modeled, often
representational elements of Greek jewelry.”17
Unfortunately, the Romans’ light-hearted and stylish
approach to personal adornment came to an end as the Roman
Empire collapsed under a failing economy and barbarian inva¬
sions from beyond its borders. Jewelry in the centuries to follow
was massive, impressive, and purely functional.

The Early
Middle Ages
(a.d. 500 to 1000
T he taste of the early Middle Ages was characterized by a

move away from the restraint and refinement of classical
Greece and Rome toward gaudy display. Nowhere was this
tendency more evident than in early medieval jewelry. There
was a corresponding move away from the private nature of
Greek and Roman jewelry, of which the purpose was personal
pleasure and adornment. In the centuries following the end of
the Roman Empire, the function of jewelry was increasingly
public, whether its purpose was to promote the image of impe¬
rial power and majesty, as in Byzantium, or, as in western
Europe, to impress the population (and potential invaders)
with the prowess and strength of the local war chief.
There was also a move away from the naturalism of classi¬
cal art generally, toward greater stylization. This tendency
seems to be typical of the art of people living in interesting but
not particularly settled times. As life became more and more
uncertain, art became more and more structured, as if people
no longer felt comfortable with the physical world in which
they found themselves.
32
The Golden Age of the
Byzantine Empire
1 he Roman Empire, which had been tottering for a couple of
centuries, fell in A.D. 476, and what was left of it transferred its
seat of power to the eastern Mediterranean and Constantinople.
There it continued as the Byzantine Empire until 1453, when
the city fell to the Ottoman Turks. The Byzantine Empire
enjoyed a golden age, when it was the mightiest political power
in the western world, from the fall of Rome to about A.D. 800;
thereafter its power and its influence on western Europe steadi¬
ly declined.
The fact that this eastern Roman Empire was Greek had lit¬
tle bearing in itself on the style of jewelry produced in the cen¬
turies following 476; jewelry manufacture in Greek and Roman
times had always been predominantly Greek. What did affect
the Byzantine jewelers’ art, in addition to the styles of the
Middle East, was an increased regimentation in the society as a
As seen by this
piece of Byzantine
jewelry, Byzantine
jewelers favored
abstract designs and
geometric shapes.
A Byzantine cross whole that is reflected in stiffness and stylization, as well as
pendant with the greater ostentation, in the jewelry produced.
Virgin Mary flanked
by Saints Basil the
Great and Gregory
The Byzantine Jeweler’s Art
Byzantine jewelers followed techniques they inherited from
Thaumaturge.
Greek goldsmiths in the classical and Hellenistic periods
(repousse and chasing, granulation, filigree, and enameling),
with certain differences. The style of all types of jewelry was
generally much simpler. Chains were still made, attractive,
sometimes ingenious, but nowhere near as intricate as those
made during the classical and Hellenistic periods. They were
generally single chains rather than meshwork, made of com¬
paratively large, heavy links.
Instead of human and animal forms, Byzantine jewelers
favored abstract designs and geometric shapes. Where motifs
were representational, they were less naturalistic, more formula¬
ic. The jewelers technique itself was often crude compared to

the work of previous centuries, as if the craftsmen became less
skillfully trained and their clients less refined and demanding.
This decline in standards had been going on throughout the last
two hundred years and may have been due to the rise of
Christianity, which preached against earthly vanity (at least for
private persons). It may also have been due to the “melting pot”
quality of the late empire, in which Roman citizens from the
barbarian h interlands rose to positions of wealth and power.
Christian motifs and iconography (formalized representa¬
tions of certain figures and symbols; for example, Christ, the
Virgin, saints, and doves) were popular. Religious jewelry such
as the enkolpion, a small reliquary (container for a relic, a bit of
something belonging to a saint or martyr) worn as a pendant,
and amulets of all sorts abounded. Even when an item of jewel¬
ry was not specifically religious in nature, crosses or other
Christian symbols were often worked into its elements; for
example, the openwork fastening rings of Byzantine necklaces.
Two techniques introduced in the Byzantine era appear to These Byzantine
have come from the Middle East: niello and opus interassile. As rings are examples of
Stasinopoulos explains, niello is a method of applying a black the niello technique,
design to a metal background: “The design is first engraved on whereby a black
the surface of the object and the spaces are then filled with a design is applied to
pul verized mixture of sulphur compounds of silver, copper and a metal background.
lead. Since this mixture has a lower melting point than the
[background metal, it melts on heating and fills the motifs,
thus creating a lustrous black decoration on the surface of the
objects.” 18
Opus interassile is an alternative to filigree for creating
openwork jewelry. According to Stasinopoulos, “The decoration
was first drawn on the metal and then selected parts were
removed with different drills and saws, creating perforated
designs reminiscent of lacework.”19
As the demand for glitter and show replaced the demand
for skilled metalwork, precious stones and pearls came to dom¬
Byzantine earrings inate jewelry design. Massed colored stones were used to cre¬
often featured a ate a multicolored effect. Where earlier stonecutters favored
central, stone- simple cabochons and expressed their ingenuity in intaglio and
encrusted plaque cameo pieces, the Byzantines had a taste for shaped and
from which faceted stones. Earrings often have a central, stone-encrusted
cylindrical or plaque from which cylindrical or faceted beads dangle.
faceted beads Necklaces consist of stones of complementary colors, connect¬
dangled. ed by links of chain.
The Jewels of
Empress Theodora
Theodora’s mosaic portrait in the
church of San Vitale at Ravenna shows
how she appeared on state occasions, as
classicist Robert Browning says, “stiff
and hieratic [ceremonial] in the glitter¬
ing brocades and jewels of a Roman
empress.”20 She literally drips with
enormous pearls. They adorn her dia¬
dem, they are braided into her hair and
hang down in long perpendula (dan¬
gling ornaments) on either side of her
face. She wears an emerald necklace
and earrings of emerald, pearl, and sap¬
phire. Her breast and shoulders are cov¬
ered by a massive pectoral decorated
ITT
tplr
with yet more pearls, two enormous rubies, and an emerald set Empress Theodora’s
into a rectangular plaque. (third from left)
Theodora’s finery is not merely for show. In combination jewels represented
with her formal, stylized pose and purple cloak they signify that the power and glory
she is earthly authority personified, static and unchanging. of the Byzantine
However, Empire and the
Christian Church.
Theodora represents more than just herself as
Empress. But what? The representation of the three
Magi on the hem of her garment gives us a hint ... it
serves to make the allusive connection between the
bringing of gifts (as she and Justinian are doing) and
the Magi’s gifts to Christ and the Virgin Mary at the
Nativity. This connection establishes an analogy
between Jesus-Mary and the Emperor-Empress.21
Theodora, with “her halo, magnificent crown, purple robe,

and lavish jewels”22 stands as the Virgin’s representative on
The Early Middle Ages (a.d. 500 to 1000) 37

The Circus Girl
A ost of what is known about Theodora comes from the historian

c/VXProcopius. This would not have pleased Theodora, for Procopius
was her bitter enemy. Procopius wrote that Theodora was the daughter of
a circus bear trainer married to an actress, considered most unsavory pro¬
fessions at the time. According to Procopius, Theodora followed her moth¬
er onto the stage and also became a courtesan of a rather low'order. She
married the soldier who would become the Emperor Justinian in a.d. 527,
and thereafter, in spite of her scandalous past, behaved with exemplary
decorum. She proved to be an empress of courage, shrewdness, and astute
political instincts. One of Justinian’s retainers wrote that her intelligence
was equal to any man’s. In 532 she faced down a riotous mob to save her
husband’s throne, remarking, “I like the old saying, that the purple is the
noblest shroud.” She was always Justinian’s most trusted counselor.
Quoted in Robert Browning, Justinian and Theodora. New York: Praeger, 1971, p. 112.
Earth, as Emporer Justinian, facing her across the sanctuary of

the church, is Christ’s.
Theodora’s jewels emphasized the power and glory of the
Byzantine Empire and the Christian Church. The grave goods
of a Saxon king in southern England testify to another sort of
power—prowess in battle and the ability to defend his land and
people.
An Anglian King’s Ship Burial

In western Europe the centuries following the fall of Rome were
a time of turmoil, and life was hard. Rome’s armies had been
withdrawn to defend Italy, and barbarian hordes in search of
new lands and plunder poured across the undefended borders

from the north and east. Beset as they were by migrations, inva¬
sions, and the general lawlessness that followed the collapse of
the Roman Empire, people concentrated on the essentials in life.
Jewelry Making in the Early

Middle Ages
What we think of as jewelry proper—rings, earrings, and
bracelets—are rare in western Europe during this period, per¬
haps because such things were expensive, nonessential, and an
encumbrance to the active and sometimes desperate lives these
people led.
Necklaces are found occasionally, either pendants connected
by chain work on the Greco-Roman and Byzantine model, or
solid, hinged models of one or more rings. Much more common
are brooches, which were not only ornamental but functional,
used to secure cloaks and other garments. To quote Alex Croom,
curator of the Arbeia Roman Fort, “In many ways they should
be viewed as part of the clothing itself, in the same way that but¬
tons are today.”23 Of these, the fibula (an ornamental safety pin),
which appeared in Greco-Roman times, continued to be popu¬
lar, particularly the “crossbow” fibula, which Gregorietti
describes as the “buckler variety with fan heads, arched bridges
and a flat or moulded foot.”24 It appears to have been a military,
or at least a male, fashion. Brooches were also round, S-shaped,
or zoomorphic (shaped like birds or animals); eagles were par¬
ticularly popular, such as a garnet-encrusted specimen found at
Cesena, Italy. S-shaped brooches were often zoomorphic as
well, with one or two animal heads, such as the two-headed
dragonesque type. Women wore brooches in pairs, often but not
always matching, to fasten their outer gown—a simple tube or
even unsewn length of fabric—at the shoulders. The so-called
turde brooches, which often occur in matched pairs, were used
for this purpose. Brooches worn this way were sometimes con¬
nected by a decorative necklace of metal links or beads. One par¬
ticular style that emerged at this time was the penannular
brooch, a circular brooch with a sliding metal pin that was
pushed through the fabric and fastened by passing it through

and resting it on the circle. Brooches are found alongside other
decorative but functional elements of dress: buckles, strap ends,
purse clasps and decorations, and fittings for armor made and
adorned by the goldsmith.
Goldsmiths in western Europe throughout the period drew
on both Roman and Byzantine forms and techniques. The jew¬
elry of the Anglo-Saxons, a warlike Germanic people who over¬
ran England in the A.D. 400s, was often decorated with niello.
Filigree, enameling, and colored stones were also popular as dec¬
oration for brooches, which were often covered so thickly that,
as Gregorietti says, they had “the appearance of a miniature
stained-glass window with gold supports instead, of lead.”25 A
The Penannular Brooch

lUf
X A VKttptKMj
£T^he penannular brooch evolved out of the annular, or ring, brooch,
X which consisted of a metal circle, through which the material to be
fastened was pulled, and a sliding pin, onto which it was then fed. The tip
of the pin rested on the top of the ring, and the weight of the cloth
pulling on it kept it in place. Ring brooches were usually simple, often
made out of bronze, but could be very rich and elaborate, as in the case
of the Hunterston Brooch. A penannular brooch is almost a ring but has
a gap in the circle to make pinning easier. The ring is flipped up, the shaft
of the pin is stuck through the material, and then the pin is passed
through the gap in the ring and the ring slid around under the pin to hold
the material in place.
The origin of the penannular brooch was probably Celtic, although
the Vikings also adopted it. Eventually it became so exaggerated that a
law was passed in Scotland limiting the length of the pin. There is a
Jellinge-style thistle-headed brooch in the British Museum with a pin over
20 inches (51.2cm) in length; in a pinch it could become a formidable
weapon.
popular variation on red enamel was the use of thin slices of gar¬ Brooches during the
net cut to shape and cemented into the metal cells. Byzantine era were
Jewelry makers also adopted styles of the people they often zoomorphic;
worked among and for, Celtic, Germanic, or Scandinavian. One that is, they were
type of decoration that became popular during the early Middle shaped like birds or
Ages was what is referred to generally as the Jellinge style animals.
(although Jellinge was one of half a dozen related styles). It is
named for a town in Denmark where there are rune stones
carved in this manner, but it probably was adapted from the
intertwining Celtic knot designs such as appear in manuscripts
of the period. Jeff Clarke, a reenactor and researcher of Viking
clothing and jewelry, describes it as “restless” and “characterised
by a seething mass of surface ornament, which is largely of
stylised animals or more correctly zoomorphic designs.”26

m- :
Man and Beast
^T^he love of nature and the realistic depiction of its creatures is a char-
X acteristic of people who have tamed it. The lady who wears earrings
with cute animal faces on them does not expect to encounter a wolf in
her living room.
The people of the early Middle Ages knew all about nature and its
creatures: Nature was powerful and the animals were fearsome, and the
people did not want to decorate their jewelry with either. They preferred
nice, abstract, and above all, orderly geometric shapes and carpet pat¬
terns. When they depicted animals at all, they did so in an extremely styl¬
ized, controlled manner. The figures become zoomorphic design elements
rather than lifelike representations. Often it requires careful examination
to pick out the animals at all. Yet even in this abstract form these animals
are monsters, creatures out of a nightmare. They writhe across the sur¬
faces they decorate, clawing and biting each other or gnawing their own
tails.
The one exception to this unflattering view of animals is their use as
royal emblems to represent courage and prowess in battle, like the wolves
on the Sutton Hoo purse lid; though even here it is debatable whether
the wolves are doing homage to the man between them or devouring him.
Several stunning examples of this type of decoration were found

during the excavation of the Sutton Hoo ship burial in 1939.
The Treasure of Sutton Hoo

Some time after A.D. 620, at Sutton Hoo on the bank of River
Deben in southeastern England, an East Anglian king was laid
to rest in his longboat with his regalia around him. His person¬
al ornaments were typical of the elegant but extremely fiinction-

al jewels of war displayed by western European nobles during
the early Middle Ages. The great gold buckle that fastened his
waist belt weighs nearly a pound, and is lavishly decorated in the
Jellinge fashion with writhing beasts picked out in niello. In
addition, he had a sword belt fastened with a buckle decorated
with blue cloisonne and garnet inlay. It matches the hilt of his
sword and the shoulder clasps that secured his leather armor. On
all these, the gold beneath the garnet inlays is textured so that
the pattern shows through the transparent stone, and the enam¬
eling is minutely detailed. The king also wore a large purse full
of gold coins, attached with hinged straps to his waist belt,
which may explain the need for the belt’s massive buckle. The
purse’s lid, perhaps of whalebone ivory, was decorated with gold
and cloisonne plaques in the Jellinge style.
Two of the plaques, which depict a pair of wolves bracketing
a man, may give a clue to the king’s identity: The design suggests
that he was one of the Wulfmgas, “sons of the wolf,” a promi¬
nent Anglian tribe. Such a man was Raedwald, bretwalda (high
king) of the East Angles, who died around A.D. 625.
In spite of, or perhaps because of, men like Raedwald, even¬
tually the invasions and upheavals came to an end, and with the
spread of Christianity, western Europe gradually settled into a
time of comparative peace. From it grew the prosperity and cul¬
tural revival of the later Middle Ages, with its lively interest in
making and wearing stylish jewelry.

The Romanesque
and Gothic Eras
T he second half of the Middle Ages was a time of recovery

and growth. Western Europe rested and rebuilt itself for a
couple of centuries after the marauding barbarians settled down
to become peaceful peasants and semi-peaceful knights and
barons. Roman Catholicism asserted itself throughout western
Europe, great monasteries were founded, and cathedrals and
cashes were built, around which towns began to grow. .After
that, Europe enjoyed a gradual revival of commerce and learn¬
ing, and as wealth and cosmopolitanism increased, a new sort of
jewelry appeared that was a pleasing union of the barbarian,
Byzantine, and Greco-Roman traditions.
The Age of Faith

The wimple and veil, a headdress that covered a womans head
(except for her face), throat, and breast, as well as the religious
fervor of the times, made the interval between the years 1000
and 1250 a discouraging time both for those who made jewelry
and for those who might have liked to wear it. This Roman¬
esque era, so-called because the architecture of the period drew
heavily on Roman and Byzantine conventions, saw enthusiastic
crusading, the rise of great monastic orders, and the establish-
44
ment of the Holy Roman Empire, but nothing that would
inspire a lady to take off her muffle of veils and commission a
pearl and sapphire necklace.
Feudalism, which focused on the production of food and
other basic resources by peasants bound to and supervised by
local nobles, became the dominant social and economic sys¬
tem. With life centering around small, agricultural fiefdoms
and a barter economy that depended on payment in goods
rather than coin, there was little money in circulation to
spend on personal adornment, and men and women in any
case had little incentive to dress extravagantly or wear fine
Romanesque Jewelry Making

Very little jewelry from the Romanesque era has survived into
modern times, mainly because very little was made or worn, as
can be seen from paintings and sculpture of the period. Women’s
dress from A.D. 1000 to 1250 was extremely modest (it became
the model for the traditional nun’s habit) and not conducive to
wearing necklaces, bracelets, or earrings. Because garments were
sewn, even brooches became less essential to a woman’s
wardrobe, though she might use them singly to fasten the throat
of her undertunic or in a pair, linked by a band of cloth, to fas¬
ten her cloak. These were usually ring brooches. Her belt,
although otherwise unadorned, might include a chatelain—an
assortment of implements in gold, silver, or bronze, linked
together on a ring, for use in her housekeeping duties and per¬
sonal grooming.
Most jewelry that was made failed to survive the centuries,
mainly because, as Gregorietti writes, “Christian burial rites, by
then in general use, put an end to the tradition of burying the
dead with all their wealth and jewels.”27
Jewelry generally had a function other than personal adorn¬
ment; for example, men’s seal rings, the equivalent of a legal sig¬
nature in an age when most people could not read and write.
Most jewelry consisted of royal and religious ornaments. “The
most interesting pieces of goldware which have come down to
The Romanesque and Gothic Eras (a.d. 1000 to 1450) 45

us are almost exclusively important pieces which were preserved
in cathedral, abbey, or royal treasuries.”28
Crowns and other regalia were made, but goldsmiths were
mainly kept busy with book covers, reliquaries, portable altars,
and similar items for the Church. Gregorietti notes, “With rare
exceptions the services of goldsmi ths were completely monopo¬
lised by the Church and, therefore, hardly any jewelry was made
for the laity.”29
The influence on Romanesque jewelry is principally
Byzantine, with barbaric and Greco-Roman elements added in,
sometimes in rather surprising ways: “It is not uncommon to
Religious Jewels
C\X7'th Europe’s conversion to Christianity came the passion for reli-

VV gious amulets and reliquaries. Those who could indulge in such
things did so lavishly. Charlemagne, king of the Franks, owned a jeweled
reliquary shaped like a pilgrim’s flask, set with two enormous cabochon
sapphires back to back. Between them was a piece of wood said to be
from the cross on which Jesus Christ was crucified.
One type of religious jewelry, which might or might not contain a
sacred relic, was the sort that opened, either to show internal leaves like
a little book, delicately enameled, or the triptych pendant on which a pair
of doors opened to reveal a scene inside, either enameled or, in particu¬
larly rich examples, carved on a cameo as in the lovely Nativity triptych.
An especially interesting example of the leaved type is the Holy Thorn
Reliquary. It is a small, bean-shaped pendant that opens to show three
panels (the two outer leaves and one side of the middle one) richly
enameled with scenes from the life of Jesus Christ and a barefoot king
kneeling in prayer. The fourth panel is covered with a parchment painting
of the Nativity that lifts out to reveal a tiny compartment holding a thorn
from Christ’s crown of thorns.
find a bishop’s ring set with a gem engraved with a pagan sub¬
ject, in strong contrast to Catholic principles.”30 The example
Gregorietti gives is set with a lovely intaglio of a nude goddess.
The enamelwork, filigree, and massed pearls and polished but
uncut colored stones popular in Byzantine times continued to be
used, but the workmanship was often even cruder than during
the Byzantine era, mainly because in the chaos of the early
Middle Ages, many of the skills of classical Greek and
Byzantine jewelers had been forgotten throughout much of
western Europe, and goldsmiths learned however they could.
Fine jewelry did continue to be made in southern Italy and
Sicily. One very lovely example of such work was the crown of
Queen Constanza of Sicily.
The Crown of Queen

Constanza
In spite of invasions by Ostrogoths, Lombards, and Normans,
Italy and Sicily maintained close ties with Byzantium and the
eastern Mediterranean, and the jewels produced by Italian gold¬
smiths were of high quality. The royal palace workshops at
Palermo, which provided regalia for the Norman rulers of the
Kingdom of Sicily, attracted Greek and Middle Eastern crafts¬
men as well as Italians, and the pieces they turned out were mas¬
terful. Such is the crown found in the tomb of Constanza of
Aragon, Spanish queen of Frederick II of Sicily, in the cathedral
at Palermo.
Although the crown was buried with Constanza, who died
in 1222, the style and workmanship suggest that it is a much ear¬
lier piece, dating from around 1130. Its influence is backward¬
looking, strongly Byzantine. In fact, it is patterned on the
Byzantine imperial crown: a meshwork skullcap around which is
fixed a band encircling the wearer’s head and supporting two
arching bands that cross over the top. These bands are decorat¬
ed with four-lobed enameled plaques, each set with a large pol¬
ished gemstone, alternating with large pearls. Bands, plaques,
and pearls are outlined with a double row of seed pearls.
Additional gemstones adorn the areas between the bands. The
The Romanesque and Gothic Eras (a.d. 1000 to 1450) 47

stones are predominantly sapphires,
and the overall effect is of glistening
blue on a field of gold frosted with seed
pearls.
One curious feature of the crown is
the decoration on the border, which
Gregorietti describes as “sixteen finely
punched gold stylised lilies in the ori¬
ental manner, each with a little tur¬
quoise in the centre.”31 The lily “in the
oriental manner,” although Middle
Eastern in origin, was at this point the
badge of the Norman kings of Sicily. It
appears later in the fleur-de-lis crest of
the French royal dynasties, perhaps
passed along through Norman connec¬
tions.
It is unusual to find gold meshwork
in a piece of jewelry from this period.
Perhaps the technique was kept alive in
the Muslim East and brought to
Palermo by Muslim craftsmen.
£:r.2,r The Gothic Flowering

from about 1250 on, a combination of factors—a ferment of ideas
brought back from the Middle East by returning crusaders and
the reestablishment of trade throughout the IVIediterranean—
undermined the feudal system and fostered the rise of cities and
universities. The result was a culture not only urban but urbane,
with a thriving monetary economy. It rapidly turned into a gold¬
smith’s dream.
Jewelry Making in the Gothic

Era
The Gothic era, which began around A.D. 1250, emerged out of
the Romanesque like an enchanted tree. Its architecture soared
upward with lacy fantasies and fantastic monsters, and in the rel-

atively settled security of the times, its decorative arts turned
once again toward the beauties of the natural world. As British
art historian Joan Evans writes, “The early fourteenth century
was a time of delicate lyricism in all the decorative arts. The love
of romance that found expression in amatory inscriptions, the
feeling for natural beauty that was expressed in every art from
monumental sculpture to illumination and embroidery, the taste
for a rather mannered elegance, were all reflected in the design
of jewels.”32
The rise of cities stimulated a thriving middle class; elegant,
city-bred courtiers replaced country barons; and the wealth
flowing in from the renewal of trade tempted goldsmiths back
In the Gothic era
to a thriving trade in jewelry making. In the larger cities guilds
jewelry, such as this
were formed to train members of the craft and regulate the qual¬ ring brooch set with
ity of the pieces made. For the first time a distinction was made cabochon rubies and
between goldsmiths and “jewelers,” craftsmen who specialized sapphires, became
in cutting, shaping, and polishing gemstones. By the 1300s the more ornamental
wearing of jewelry by both men and women had become so than functional.
popular that rulers started passing (and repeal¬
ing) laws governing which social classes
could wear what sorts of jewelry. It
seems likely that these laws were
not very rigorously enforced.
Gemstones were still cabo-
chon, polished and to some
degree shaped (ovals, rectan¬
gles, or lozenges) but with¬
out faceting, and the cut¬
ting and polishing usually
followed the shape of the
stone. Diamonds began to
be used; they were not
faceted, but simple point and
table cuts using the natural
shape of the diamond crystal
appeared around 1400. Cameos and
intaglios were prized, and medieval
The Romanesque and Gothic Eras (a.d. 1000 to 1^50) 49

craftsmen often reused Greco-Roman pieces, though cameo
carving continued in Byzantium from Greco-Roman times
onward, and fine ones, such as the Noah Cameo, were being
made in Italy and Sicily as early as 1200.
Jewelry after 1250 became more ornamental than function¬
al. Women as well as men began to wear rings set with pearls
and precious gems in fanciful settings, and a nobleman’s rings
were not just his father’s legal signature anymore, although seal
rings with intaglio gems or engraved gold signets continued to
be worn. Duke John the Fearless of Burgundy sported a ring
with a tall, goblet-shaped bezel flanked on either side with a
dragon’s head rising from a collar of fleurs-de-lis; -he also owned
one with a portrait of himself in carved ivory, enamel, and pre¬
cious stones set in gold. He may have worn them together; it
became the fashion of those who could afford it to wear several
rings on each hand and even more than one on a finger.
Brooches, Brooches, Brooches

The functional ring brooch of Romanesque times continued to
be worn, though by the 1300s it was considered somewhat out
of fashion. Among the moneyed and fashion-conscious the ring
brooch evolved into hexagonal and heart shapes, decorated with
niello prayers and romantic sentiments or enamel and filigree
flowers. Those that retained the original ring shape were
enriched with praying hands, gems in tall cone-shaped settings
called collets, or delicate reliefs in the form of leaves, flowers,
and fruit.
Other types of circular brooch evolved from the ring brooch,
with the sort of pin and catch used on brooches today. The
wheel brooch consisted of one or more rings connected by
“spokes,” rings and spokes decorated with gems or gold work.
The cluster brooch was a circular brooch with a single large
jewel in the center, surrounded by pearls or other smaller gems.
Brooches were made in other shapes as well; for example, the
lozenge, like the Fleur-de-Lis Brooch, a diamond-shaped
plaque with gold fleurs-de-lis on a blue enamel background, on
which is set a single large fleur-de-lis set with precious stones.

Most elaborate of all are brooches that
incorporate sculptural elements cast using the
lost wax method and usually richly enameled.
The Founder’s Jewel, bequeathed to New
College, Oxford, by its founder William of
Wykeham in 1404, is a monogram letter
M in which the two spaces formed by the
arches of the letter are transformed into
two Gothic niches in which stand
beautifully modeled and enameled fig¬
ures of the Angel of the Annunciation
and the Madonna. Between them, the
central stroke of the letter supports a vase
carved from a ruby, from which spring The heart-shaped
three enameled lilies. The rest of the letter is rich- brooch was
ly encrusted with gems and pearls. An equally striking example fashionable in the
is the Lovers Brooch from around 1450, depicting a pair of Cothic era.
lovers in a garden. The boy and girl are cast, and decorated with
blue and white enamel; the boy’s hair is done in coiling gold
wire. They stand in a garden of enameled green leaves and tiny
pearl flowers in high relief, surrounded by a paling fence that
forms the outer rim of the brooch, which is also decorated with
a triangular diamond, a ruby, and several large pearls.
Belts and Necklaces

Around 1340, elaborate jeweled belts came into fashion, with
beautifully cast buckles and strap ends and linked plaques deco¬
rated with enamel. A buckle from around 1340, found in Sweden
but probably German, depicts a knight, accompanied by a page,
riding to meet his lady. On the loop of the buckle, one man
kneels to another in a bower of grapevines. Men and women
wore both waist and hip belts, and also wide, baldric-style belts
that went over one shoulder and under the opposite arm.
Among noble ladies, hair and headdresses went up and
necklines came down, exposing throats and bosoms to be
adorned with fine necklaces. (Earrings, however, did not catch
on because the headdresses and hairstyles of the late Middle
The Romanesque and Gothic Eras (a.d. iooo to 1450) 51

The Goldsmith
^T~Xuring the Gothic era most goldsmiths worked in cities and had
their shops in one central location, often on bridges like the Ponte
Vecchio in Florence, where there was a regular flow of traffic. They
belonged to guilds, which were something between a labor union and a
professional association; the guild fixed prices, set quality standards, and
oversaw the training of apprentices.
A boy training to become a goldsmith served an apprenticeship with
a master goldsmith. Although his father was often a goldsmith, the boy
was usually apprenticed to another goldsmith in the same guild. The
boy’s father or sponsor had to put up a bond so that the master would
be reimbursed if the apprentice proved unsatisfactory. The apprentice
lived with the master and his family and trained in the master’s shop.
Once the master was satisfied with his progress, he was promoted to
journeyman. (The term “journeyman” comes from the French word jour,
meaning “day,” because the journeyman was paid by the day.) Though
free to seek employment elsewhere many journeymen remained with their
master and even married into his family. When he was judged advanced
enough the journeyman made his “master piece”; if the guild passed on
it he became a master goldsmith in his own right.
Ages usually covered the ears.) Both sexes wore “collars,” which
might be anything from the choker sort of necklaces seen on
ladies in the Duke de Berrys books of hours (a type of personal
prayer book) to the massive, shoulder-width chains, often with
a pendant, worn by noblemen over their outer robes. When the
French princess Isabelle de Valois came to England in 1396 to
marry Richard II, her enchanted husband-to-be presented her
with, among other rich gifts, “a collar of diamonds, rubies and
large pearls.”'3 Necklaces, too, remained in fashion.

Above all, jewelry of the Gothic era was characterized by a
kind of fanciful delicacy. No piece of Gothic jewelry is more typ¬
ical of the airy grace of the period than the Crown of Princess
Blanche.
A Princess’s Wedding Crown

This fairy-tale crown is called the Crown of Princess Blanche
because it was sent with Blanche of Lancaster, daughter of
Henry IV of England, to be worn at her wedding in 1404. But
in fact it was rifled from the treasury of Richard II when Henry
IV usurped his throne in 1399 and sent him off to imprison¬
ment and murder. It was originally part of the trousseau of little
Princess Isabelle de Valois whom Richard married in 1396.
It is the perfect crown for a little bride who is also a princess,
as different as can be from the squat Byzantine diadems of the
Romanesque era such as the crown of Queen Constanza. From
a garland of rubies, sapphires, and pearl-and-emerald blossoms,
twelve slender spires rise up like the columns of a Gothic cathe¬
dral, ending in Gothic ivy leaves, each centered with a sapphire
and tipped with a pearl ornament. From the sides of the spires,
smaller leaves branch out, framing sapphires and pearl flowers.
It is so delicate it looks almost weightless, as if it would float
above the little princess’s head whenever she wore it.
Between 1450 and 1500, the dreamlike elegance of the
Gothic era surged into the very wide-awake vigor of the
Renaissance, which was both a journey back to Greek and
Roman learning and artistic values and a journey forward to the
riches and adventure of a new world. All this energy had a great
impact on the style of Renaissance jewelry.
The Romanesque and Gothic Eras (a.d. iooo to 1450) 53

The Renaissance
(a.d. 1450 to 1600)
T he Renaissance, which means “rebirth,” began in Italy and

spread across Europe to the north and west. It grew natural¬
ly out of the revival of learning during the late Middle Ages, as
the works of Greek and Roman authors made their way into the
hands of secular scholars by way of the great universities at
Solerno and Bologna, Paris, Heidelberg, and Oxford. Shortly
after 1450, printed books appeared, which made the written
word available to anyone who could read and greatly advanced
the spread of knowledge across Europe. With the growing
enthusiasm for classical (Greek and Roman) learning came a
return to classical humanism—the recognition of the human
mind and body as beautiful and admirable. This way of thinking
had an effect on jewelry, which came to be viewed as a means of
enhancing and celebrating the human body. Writes art historian
Daniela Mascetti,
The transition from Gothic styles to those of the

Renaissance was largely prompted by a renewed inter¬
est in the culture and arts of Ancient Greece and
Rome. ... It was . . . the rediscovery of human beauty
in the nude, and the recognition of man as an individ-
ual whose natural dignity springs from his qualities and
merits, which were the most immediate influences on
fashion and jewelry. Clothes and jewels became a
means of enhancing natural human beauty, rather than
overshadowing it with artificiality, thus establishing a
new harmony between body, dress and ornament.34
But the great discoveries of the Renaissance focused on the

future as well as the past. In 1492 a Genoese sea captain named
Christopher Columbus stepped ashore on the island of San
Salvador in the Bahamas and opened up a whole new world to This portrait of
Europeans. With the discovery of the Americas vast wealth Simonetta Vespucci
poured into Europe, plundered from the native peoples: gold captures how women
and silver from priceless Aztec and Inca works of art melted wore their hair in
down into bars, precious stones from Mexico and the Andes. fantastic braids and
With these riches came a spirit of adventure, exploration, and knots interwoven
conquest that also influenced Renaissance jewelry, in the self- with jewels.
confident naturalism and exu¬
berant imagination it ex¬
pressed.
Renaissance jewelry drew
on classical sculpture and the
general humanistic and expan¬
sive spirit of the age rather
than on Greek and Roman
jewelry itself. Except for sur¬
viving cameos and intaglios,
Greco-Roman jewelry was
virtually unknown and never
copied. As Evans writes,
“Apart from the imitation of
antique cameos, there seems to
have been little direct classical
influence: neither the tech¬
nique of filigree nor the style of
jewels all of delicate gold were
revived.”35
The Renaissance (a.d. 1450 to 1600) 55

The Renaissance Jeweler’s Art
With the celebration of the human body came an enthusiasm
for adorning it. Jewelry in all forms, with beautiful and elaborate
designs, became popular. From the Italian painter Botticelli’s
goddesses to state portraits of Queen Elizabeth I, Renaissance
ladies were festooned with gold chains, ropes of pearls, and
strands of precious stones. In Italy hair once again became a
woman’s crowning glory, and it was worn in soft waves and fan¬
tastic braids and knots interwoven with jewels. Simonetta
Vespucci, a reigning Florentine beauty, was painted by both
Botticelli and Piero di Cosimo with her flowing blond hair worn
in this fashion. A portrait of apple-cheeked little Barbara
Pallavicino shows her wearing a Juliet hairnet, a jeweled circlet,
and a large emerald and pearl hair ornament.
In the north of Europe, the parure, a lavish set of matching
jewels, came into fashion. It might include one or more neck¬
laces, pendants, and brooches as well as jeweled bands to deco¬
rate the low, square neckline and the headdress. Ladies com¬
monly wore two necklaces, a short collar, or carcanet, and a
longer plain or jeweled chain or rope of pearls draped over the
shoulders, either or both of which might support a pendant.
They might also wear a brooch in the center of the bodice, as
seen in Hans Holbein’s portrait of Jane Seymour. Queen
Elizabeth I in the Ditchley portrait wears, in addition to a three-
strand, long necklace of pearls and a knotted rope of pearls, a
carcanet of alternating ruby and emerald settings separated by
florettes of pearls; a matching bodice ornament; large pearls and
plaques sewn all over her gown, complementing her carcanet;
pearl, ruby, and emerald hair ornaments; and a coronet tipped
with an emerald and an enormous ruby that resemble an olive
and a cherry tomato on a toothpick.
Men as well as women sported parures of gems designed to
complement their rich clothing. As Gregorietti says, “Forms
and colours had to be in harmonious accord or contrast with
the colours of the fabrics.”36 In Holbein’s portrait of Henry
VIII, from whom Elizabeth I, his daughter, inherited her taste

for extravagant jewels, the king
wears an elaborate wide chain
draped over his shoulders. “The
chain is the same as the one
designed by Holbein now in the
British museum, London; it
consists of knotted elements
finely modelled with buds,
leaves, and scrolls set with large,
table-cut rubies in embellished
mounts. Between each gem are
set two pearls.”37 The king’s fin¬
ger rings, as well as his jeweled
buttons, hat ornaments, and the
clasps that fasten the slashings
on his sleeves are designed to
match the ensemble.
Both men and women wore
rings, often more than one on a
hand. These were delicately
adorned with niello or enameled,
often on the inside as well as the
outside, and set with gems or pearls. Signet rings remained pop¬ This portrait of
ular, with either engraved gems or gold bezels carved with coats Queen Elizabeth I
of arms or classical subjects. An interesting Renaissance fashion exemplifies the
was the ring with a hinged lid that opened to reveal a small com¬ parure, or set of
partment; though these are popularly referred to today as “poi¬ matching jewels. All
son rings,” they were most likely containers for religious relics of the jewelry on her
and other religious objects. body, on her dress,
Earrings made a tentative comeback in the Renaissance. and in her hair

matches or is
They were more popular with men than with women, because
complementary.
womens hairstyles and headdresses still tended to cover the ears.
They did not really become popular with women until the 1600s.
It was no accident that all these fashions in jewels were so
elegant. Famous artists were in demand as designers of jewelry.
Holbein, best known for his portraits of King Henry VIII and
his queens, also turned his hand to sketching patterns for their

The Swashbuckler:
Benvenuto Cellini
A °st of what we know about Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571),

sJ V X.go Id smith, musician, soldier, and rascal, he tells us himself in his
autobiography. And what an autobiography it is. The Web site
Answers.com reports that “Cellini tells of his escapades with the frank¬
ness and consummate egoism characteristic of the Renaissance man.”1
Between his battles, rivalries, amorous interludes, and occasional mur¬
ders, it is amazing that the man had time to get any work done at all. But
he did. Expert Joan Evans in A History of Jewelry, 1100-1870 calls him “the
type of the Renaissance jewellers who by sheer virtuosity attained the
rank of artist.”2
No jewels survive today that are known to be his work, although a
lovely medallion of Leda and the Swan is attributed to him. Among his
known surviving works is a famous salt cellar depicting the gods of earth
and sea that he made for the king of France.
Today a portrait bust of Cellini is enshrined on the Ponte Vecchio, still
the Florentine jewelers’ quarter, in tribute to Florence’s most notorious
master goldsmith.
1. Answers.com, “Benvenuto Cellini.” www.answers.com.

2. Joan Evans, A History of Jewelry, 1100-1870. Boston: Boston Book and Art, 1970, p. 83.
collars and brooches and pendants. The studies that have sur¬
vived are themselves small works of art. To all these lavish styles
of jewelry making, Renaissance jewelers applied new techniques
even as they refined old ones.
Renaissance Jewelers’
Techniques
New techniques in enameling that had begun in the late Middle
Ages were continued and further developed in the Renaissance.

In the case of a very frequently used technique, enam¬
el champleve, the enamel is contained in beds gouged
into the metal. Basse-taille enamel was translucent,
added over a design engraved into the groundplate. A
special technique used from the fourteenth century was
called ronde bosse or painted enamel. The enamel was
applied to previously roughened surfaces in high relief
or even completely in the round. The so-called
Dunstable Swan Jewel ... is among the most famous
examples of the use of ronde bosse enamelling.38
Renaissance gem cutters also expanded their craft. Europe

had a ready supply of precious stones: raw turquoise and emer¬
alds from the New World and diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and
pearls that Portuguese merchants were bringing back from India
and Ceylon. These provided craftsmen with a rich supply of
gems with which to work.
During the Renaissance, gem shaping progressed to the
point of producing gems of uniform shapes and sizes. Gem
cutting, however, still followed the simple cabochon point
and table cuts of the late Middle Ages, although diamond
polishing improved greatly, and the point and table cuts
began to be applied to colored stones as well as to diamonds.
Still, applied to diamonds, the point and table cuts did not
display the strong dispersion of light, or “fire,” of a modern
diamond. In the Renaissance, diamonds were valued for their
lustrous surface rather than their inner sparkle; table-cut dia¬
monds appear black to the eye, as they do in paintings and
photographs.
Northern Italy, primarily Florence and later Rome and
Venice, became the new center for the art of carving cameos
and intaglios. Italian gem carvers were renowned for their skill,
and they were hired away to courts all over Europe. Popes and
noblemen collected their masterpieces. Some of the most fan¬
tastic examples of rich enamel work and the fanciful use of
gems are the pendants and brooches made for wealthy
Renaissance patrons.

Make Me One with
Everything: Renaissance
Pendants and Brooches
Jeweled and enameled ships in full sail navigate across ladies’
bosoms or hung from noblemen’s gold collars. Mermaids and
mermen cavort through the waves. A black-enameled African
trudges across a landscape encrusted with rubies and emeralds,
carrying a large basket of gems. A blue-enameled and baroque
pearl salamander with an emerald pendant in his mouth writhes
on intricate chains beneath a pearl pendant. In the making of
pendants and brooches, the Renaissance goldsmith let his imag¬
ination run riot. And his patrons loved it.
Jewels with cast sculptural elements were very popular, as
they were in the late Middle Ages, but the technique improved
astronomically. As Evans writes, “Certain Renaissance jewels are
A Renaissance-era such tours de force of minute sculpture that they have passed the
enameled gold line that divides art from virtuosity. Such reliefs . . . demand
pendant. judgment as pure sculpture.”39
Goldsmiths seemed challenged to
see how many kinds of decoration they
could fit onto a brooch or pendant.
Enameled gold bases are encrusted
with cut and cabochon and carved jew¬
els, hung with jeweled and pearl pen¬
dants, fitted around monstrous baroque
pearls.
Both goldsmiths and patrons espe¬
cially loved the so-called baroque
pearls (the name comes from Italian
barocco, “imperfect pearl”), great mis¬
shapen nodules of mother-of-pearl
that defied the imagination to see
what could be made of them. They
form the bodies of gods and mercrea-
tures, dragons and monsters, and fab¬
ulous birds and beasts. One particular-
The Renaissance Cameo
{TV Torthern Italy was acknowledged by all of Europe to produce the

greatest carvers of cameos and intaglios of the Renaissance. Their
craft probably came from southern Italy, where it had flourished during
the Middle Ages, but they brought to it the full zest of Renaissance
humanism and a return to classical subjects: gods and goddesses, bac¬
chanalian revels, shepherdesses and fauns. They also carved portraits of
their patrons, some of whom made collections of their works.
Cameos in this time were hard stone carvings. Some were done in
stones such as carnelian and jasper, but the preferred stone was a band¬
ed onyx or agate, in which the figures could be carved in relief against a
contrasting background. Usually the figures were light on dark, but as the
Age of Exploration excited a taste for the exotic, black figures were carved
against a light background, as in a striking African Diana.
The Renaissance enthusiasm for variety influenced cameo carving and
inspired craftsmen to add embellishments such as the Black Diana's gold-
and-pearl earring. Sometimes the cameo carving was set against a back¬
ground of gold or enamel instead of the matrix of its native stone, as in
the lovely composite cameos by Ottavio Miseroni or Cellini's Leda.
ly knobbly specimen hangs as a bunch of grapes from a jeweled

and enameled mounting.
The results are jewels of exuberant fantasy. Two pieces, one
a pendant and one a brooch, particularly capture the modern
imagination. One is the pendant known as the Canning Jewel,
which features a belligerent merman armed with sword and
shield. The Canning merman’s torso is formed from a mon¬
strous baroque pearl. His head, arm, tail, and shield are of gold,
enameled opaque white and blue and a translucent green that

shows scales incised into the underlying groundwork. His tail,
belt, sword, and shield are set with table-cut diamonds and
cabochon rubies; the large carved ruby in the middle of his body
may be a later addition. Three large baroque pearl pendants
hang from the merman’s body and shield to give the piece bal¬
ance. The overall effect expresses perfectly the merman’s prince¬
ly courage and bravado.
The other, a brooch that once belonged to the Grand Duke
of Tuscany, features a rooster. One theme of Renaissance pen¬
dants and brooches was birds. Normally, these were birds with
either noble or exotic associations, such as swans, eagles, peli¬
cans, or parrots. This particular cockerel, known affectionately as
the “Florentine Rooster,”40 may be one of the many cases of a
Florentine artist celebrating the feisty underdog that symbolized
the city ot Florence. He is a remarkably handsome little fellow.
His body is of gold, built around a large baroque pearl that forms
his throat and hackle. His head, wings, and lower body are rich¬
ly enameled in iridescent green and blue and opaque white. He
has a cabochon ruby eye; he wears a point-cut ruby on his breast
and another large ruby set into his wing, and his red, green, and
blue tail feathers are studded with table-cut diamonds. His
green-enameled feet tread an enameled scepter underfoot.
These jewels express the spirit of the Renaissance, which
mingled the art and the humanism of Greece and Rome with its
own exuberance. The period that followed was a curious echo of
Byzantium: stately, pompous, unimaginative, and very con¬
cerned with maintaining the status quo, all of which had a
quelling effect on the jewels that people wore.

Baroque and Rococo
(a.d. 1600 to 1815)
B y around 1600 the bold self-confidence of the Renaissance

seemed to settle into a period of stifling self-importance.
This baroque era was an age of the divine right of kings. Kings
and nobles enjoyed absolute power over the people; Louis XIV
informed the French parliament, “L’etat, c’est moi!” (“I am the
State!”) This absolutism was most extreme in France, although
the rest of Europe followed its example.
Around 1700 France dissolved into the giddy gaiety of the
rococo era. French queen Marie Antoinette went to balls in
diamond-studded slippers, while the common people suffered
famine and groaned under the authority of the nobles. If the
harvest was bad, as it often was in these years of exhausted soil
and exhausted peasantry, the king and nobles took their share
regardless. Shortages drove up the price of grain, and both peas¬
ants and urban poor went hungry. Marie Antoinette probably
never said “Let them eat cake” when she was told that the peo¬
ple of Paris were angry because they had no bread. There is no
question, however, that the poor women of Paris marched on the
royal palace at Versailles to protest their own suffering and the
greed and indifference of the noble class.
As it followed the French example in government, the rest
of Europe also followed the French example in fashion, and par¬
ticularly in the fashions of jewelry. The jewelry of these times
ranged from the icy formality of the baroque to the glittering
excesses of rococo. Inspired by the early regime of Napoleon, it
ended in a stern neoclassicism that copied the styles of ancient
classical jewelry.
Pomp and Pompousness

Kings and nobles, who wore the jewelry in the baroque era, were
full of pompous self-regard. In fact they swelled with it as their
clothing and hats and wigs billowed to the point that their jew¬
elry was quite dwarfed and overshadowed. The jewelry itself was
curiously static compared to the explosive imagination of the
Renaissance. Its principal inspirations seem to have been the
formal gardens and monumental architecture that symbolized
the majesty of the king and nobility.
Baroque Jewelry Making

Baroque jewelry emphasized faceted gems, particularly dia¬
monds, instead of the brilliant gold work and enameling of the
Renaissance. The stones were arranged in linear rows and rigid
geometric clusters. Motifs were few and unimaginative: scrolls,
feathers, formalized leaves and flowers, ribbon bows. Gold work
and enameling became little more than a background on which
to display the gems.
One reason for this dramatic change in style was the rapid
development in cutting and faceting diamonds. In the late
Renaissance, diamond cutters in Antwerp invented the rose cut,
a flat-bottomed crown with perfectly symmetrical triangular
facets. Around 1650 the first brilliant diamond cut was intro¬
duced, which displayed the diamond s fire as well as its luster.
Known as the Mazarin, it had a table and sixteen facets on the
crown (upper part) of the stone. A Venetian polisher named
Peruzzi increased the number of facets on the crown to thirty-
two, in what is known as the Peruzzi cut. These diamonds
showed infinitely more fire than the old point and table cuts, but
64 The J eweler’s Art

the Mazarin and Pemzzi cuts, because of their rectangular The pearl necklace
shape, were rather dull compared to modern round-cut dia¬ was the most
monds. popular neck jewelry
Other precious stones also began to be faceted to match the in the 1600s.
diamond, and, says Gregorietti, “From the second half of the
century onwards, precious personal ornaments were dominated
by faceted gems, and it became inconceivable to mount cabo-
chon stones. . . . The principal place in the design was given to
precious stones cut in various shapes and sizes.”41
The other reason for the preference for stones over gold
work was a steady supply of diamonds and other precious
stones imported from India. Although the Portuguese had
dominated the trade in oriental gems during the Renaissance,
by the 1600s the British, Dutch, and French East India Com¬
panies were edging them out, and adventurers like Jean-
Baptiste de Tavernier made a career out of the diamond trade.
Baroque and Rococo (a.d. 1600 to 1815) 65

The result was a steadily increasing flow of not only diamonds
but also rubies, sapphires, and pearls from the East.
Pearls were the most popular gem after the diamond. They
were set with diamonds and used almost offhandedly as decora¬
tions on jewels featuring other gems. Strands of pearls were also
popular at the time. Says Mascetti, “Undoubtedly, . . . the most
fashionable form of neck ornament throughout the century was
the pearl necklace.”42 The pearl necklace was a constant with
both noble ladies and the wealthy middle class, and the drop¬
shaped pearl, either by itself or with other gems as embellish¬
ments, was worn in earrings, as in Dutch painter Jan Vermeer’s
immortal Girl with a Pearl Earring.
The drop-shaped
pearl earring is
showcased in Jan
Vermeer’s famous
work Girl with a Pearl
Earring.

Ribbons and
Bows
The one really distinctive jewelry
motif of the 1600s was the ribbon
bow. Necklaces were fastened with
ribbon ties fed through loops on the
ends and tied in a bow, as in
Vermeer’s famous painting of the
lady tying on her pearl necklace. This
sort of fastening allowed the wearer
to adjust the tightness of the neck¬
lace to ride fashionably high on the
throat. Bows were also used to attach
pendants to earrings and generally
to fasten clothing. Gradually these
ribbon-bow elements were them¬
selves translated into fashion acces¬
sories rather than functional fasten¬
ings, and ultimately into jewelry in
the shape of ribbon bows. Ribbon bows went
One enterprising enameler capitalized on the trend of mak¬ from functional
ing necklaces of linked gold or silver bows: “Necklaces of this fastenings to fashion
type frequently featured polychrome painted enamel decoration, accessories.
a technique developed in the early decades of the century by the
French jeweler, Jean Toutin (1578-1640), to produce opaque
white or pale blue backgrounds with black decoration or vice
versa.”43 Judging from surviving examples, the effect was lacy
and quite elegant. Toutin also extended his enamel-painting
technique to making portrait miniatures.
Glitter and Greed

If baroque jewels shimmered and glowed, rococo jewels flashed
and glittered and sparkled. This was the era in which the dia¬
mond came into its own. Necklaces and brooches and bracelets
and rings were designed almost entirely to show off the fire of
diamonds.

The Curse of the Hope Diamond
(Tt is unlikely that Jean-Baptiste de Tavernier stole the great blue dia-
Amond from the forehead of an Indian idol and so brought a curse to
anyone who owned it. It is true that Tavernier brought the stone back
from India and sold it to King Louis XIV. Louis XIV did not suffer any ill
effects from owning the diamond, but his descendants died in tragically
large numbers at tragically early ages. Louis XVI, who inherited the stone,
had his life cut short by the guillotine during the French Revolution. The
diamond, known as the French Blue, was stolen in 1791 and disappeared.
In 1823 a large blue diamond thought to be a recut of the French
Blue turned up in London. Eventually it came into the possession of
Henry Philip Hope, a wealthy collector who gave the diamond its present
name. After his death the diamond was sold to a succession of buyers
who suffered various misfortunes. Finally, it was bought by New York dia¬
mond merchant Harry Winston, who donated it to the Smithsonian
Institution in 1958. Winston, who died of natural causes at the age of
eighty-two, did not believe in the curse of the Hope Diamond.
The Hope Diamond

pendant.
Rococo Jewelry Making
The rococo era, which extended from around 1700 to the col¬
lapse of the French monarchy with the French Revolution in
1789, was a time of eccentric frivolity and the absolute rule of
French fashion throughout Europe; and French fashion decreed
diamonds, diamonds, and more diamonds. While hairdos rose
to ridiculous heights and skirts spread out until two ladies could
not pass through a door together, the plunging neckline and the
diamonds that set it off remained a fashionable constant.
Very few actual examples of rococo diamond jewelry have
survived intact, because diamonds, as valuable as they are, are
recut and reset to accommodate the fashions of later times.
Fortunately, enough noble ladies of the 1700s sat for their por¬
traits in their diamond parures that it is possible to see how
rococo diamond jewelry looked.
By the 1700s metal settings had become virtually invisible
and served almost entirely as a support for diamonds and other
gems. Diamonds were set in silver so that the setting would not
contrast with the color of the stones, and the silver itself was
backed with gold plating or fabric so that it would not discolor
the wearer’s skin and clothing with black tarnish.
Two factors accounted for the diamond’s enormous popular¬
ity. First, by the early 1700s diamond cutters began to develop
the modern round brilliant cut. The early form of this cut, which
remained in use throughout the 1800s and was known as the old
European, had a more rounded shape than the earlier Mazarin
and Peruzzi cuts and was also “a cut that enhanced the optical
properties of diamonds and enabled the stone to reflect light and
sparkle.”44
Second, the popularity of the diamond was enhanced by the
discovery of large deposits in Brazil just as the diamond fields in
India were running out; diamonds were in good supply, readily
available to those who could afford them.
Rococo Fashions in Jewelry

For the most part the motifs used in rococo jewelry were those
of the previous century: geometric forms, feathers, stylized

Noblewomen in the
1700s outfitted
themselves with
lavish jewels, such as
this diamond and
emerald brooch with
a briolette emerald
pendant.
leaves and flowers, the ribbon bow. Although colored stones

came back into vogue around 1760, color schemes were flat—
generally diamonds with at most one or two additional colors.
The color scheme was usually carried throughout a lady’s parure
of matching pieces.
The focal piece of a lady’s parure was the necklace, which was
worn high about the throat to emphasize the slenderness and ele¬
gance of the wearer’s neck. Two styles were particularly popular:
the band necklace and the riviere. The former consisted of
an articulated open-work band of varying width set

with a variety of gemstones. This basic form could be

enriched by the addition of a central pendant either in
the shape of a ribbon bow or a cross. Alternatively, it
could support a pendant designed as a pear-shaped
drop or an elaborate combination of ribbon bow and
drops. . . . The most elaborate version of this type of
necklace was known as the esclavage, which consisted of
the basic open-work band embellished with single or
multiple central festoons [looped swags], often
enriched with pendants. All these additional elements
could be detached from the basic band by means of a
hook-and-eye device, making this type of neck orna¬
ment particularly versatile.45
The riviere (a “river” of gems) was a single line of large gem¬

stones, often graduated in size from the middle, usually support¬
ing a large diamond drop. The gemstones might be diamonds or
colored gems, often surrounded with smaller diamonds. With
The aigrette, shown

here as a brooch,
was an ornament in
the shape of a spray
of egret feathers,
used to adorn a
lady’s hair or
clothing.
the necklace went matching earrings with faceted drops or a
girandole design, which had three pendants attached to a single
large diamond or an ornate base. If the lady desired and could
afford it, she also wore matching bracelets, rings, brooches, and
jeweled hair ornaments. Gregorietti describes a portrait of an
Italian noblewoman of the period:
She wears a rich parure of diamonds consisting of an

aigrette [an ornament in the shape of a spray of egret
feathers], together with at least seven other jewels scat¬
tered in her hair, as well as earrings made of three
round gems set in a triangular shape with briolette
pendants, and a diamond collar necklace made of
curved elements matching those of the bracelet. In
addition to rings, she has a long pearl necklace pinned
to the left side of her decollete by an aigrette brooch.46
Naturally all these diamond adornments were very costly.

Noble ladies lavished a great deal of money on them, whether
they could afford to or not. Such frivolous and extravagant dis¬
plays did not sit well with the common people, who watched
their children go hungry while aristocrats went to balls glitter¬
ing and sparkling with jewels. When the queen of France her¬
self created a scandal trying to acquire an elaborate diamond
necklace (or so the rumor went), the results had long-reaching
consequences for the royalty and aristocracy, as well as for France
itself.
The Queen’s Necklace

French queen Marie Antoinette s passion for diamonds sparked a
scandal in 1785 that shook the French monarchy to its founda¬
tions and paved the way for the Revolution that would overthrow
it. The cause of all the trouble was a necklace of the more extreme
esclavage (“slave”) type that King Louis XV, grandfather-in-law of
Marie Antoinette, commissioned for his mistress, Madame du
Barry. The necklace, says Gregorietti, consisted of a collar of sev¬
enteen huge diamonds from which were suspended three festoons

French queen Marie
Antoinette had
a passion for
diamonds and
jewelry.
and four pendants entirely of diamonds; it was completed with

another double riviere with four tassels also in diamonds.”47
Louis XV died before the necklace was finished and paid for,
and the designers, not wanting to find themselves out of pock¬
et, offered it to King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette’s husband,
who said he could not afford it. Some time later a shady charac¬
ter who called herself the Comtesse de la Motte persuaded the
Cardinal de Rohan, who badly wanted to gain the queen’s good
graces, to buy the necklace for Marie Antoinette without Louis’
knowledge. The cardinal was told the queen would pay him for

The Traveler:
.«c
Jean-Baptiste de Tavernier
I!
^TVom an early age, Jean-Baptiste de Tavernier (1605-1689) wanted

JT to travel. Perhaps the fact that his father and uncle were geogra¬
phers had something to do with it. In 1630, having journeyed to Italy,
Switzerland, Germany, Poland, and Hungary, he set out for the East with
two French priests and reached Persia by way of Constantinople.
In 1638 he journeyed to India and visited the court of the Great
Mogul. Impressed by the diamond mines at Golconda, he set himself up
as a gentleman merchant dealing in precious gems. In all, he made five
expeditions to the East, on one of them going as far as Java. He estab¬
lished profitable trade relations with the great potentates of India and
acquired great wealth and a great reputation back in France. He sold the
large blue diamond that became the Hope Diamond to Louis XIV, who
made him a nobleman. In his late fifties he decided to marry, settle down,
and spend his remaining years writing an account of his travels.
Perhaps the settled life did not agree with him. In 1687 he set off
again, traveling to Moscow by way of Copenhagen. He died as he had
lived most of his life, on the road.
the necklace. The trusting cardinal acquired the necklace and

handed it over to the comtesse, who dispatched it to England to
be broken up and sold. The ensuing scandal caused the cardinal
to be exiled to his abbey, all thoughts of royal favor despaired of;
the comtesse, after a brief imprisonment, moved on to more
devious adventures.
Most historians agree that Marie Antoinette was not
involved in the transaction. At the time, however, because of the
queen’s notorious extravagance, the people believed that she self¬
ishly tried to acquire the necklace despite the fact that France

could not afford it. The scandal fed revolutionary grumblings to
overthrow a monarchy so insensitive to the needs of the people.
The rococo era came to a bloody end in 1789 with the French
Revolution, which overthrew the French monarchy and aristoc¬
racy and sent them to the guillotine,
The Empire
With the French Revolution and the downfall of the French
monarchy came the rejection of everything that had stood for
rococo French fashion in the court of Louis XVI and Marie
Antoinette. Taking advantage of the chaos that followed the
Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte siezed power in 1799. His
regime began as a return to the democratic ideals of Greece and
Rome.
Fashion followed society’s return to classical ideals. Women
turned to wearing what they imagined Greek clothing must
have looked like: very simple, clinging, high-wasted gowns with
low necklines. Jewelry too returned to a style called “neoclassi¬
cal,” inspired by classical Greece, with a renewed emphasis on
gold work, simple lines, and a great interest in cameos, cabochon
gems, and opaque colored stones that carried over into the next
century.
Napoleon’s regime ended with his downfall in 1815 after fif¬
teen years of tyranny and imperial conquest throughout Europe.
The world following the French Revolution and the final defeat
of Napoleons plans for empire was a world very different from
the one of the 1600s and 1700s. It saw the Industrial
Revolution, the rise of a solid middle class in both Europe and
America, and a British queen who embodied the staunchest of
middle-class values.

The Victorians and
Edwardians
E urope emerged from the horrors of the French Revolution

and the Napoleonic Wars with a strong desire to settle
down. This trend was accelerated by the Industrial Revolution,
which gave rise to a thriving middle class that encouraged most
European states to experiment with democracy or constitution¬
al monarchy. England and the United States set the example. In
the United States the Civil War (1861-1865) put an end to the
country’s last vestige of aristocratic society and the institution of
black slavery that made it possible. In 1840 the young English
queen Victoria married a proper German prince and dedicated
herself to a life of respectability and good behavior that was to
make her name a byword for middle-class virtue. Jewelry, while
still lavish for formal and state occasions, was generally subdued
and made of such materials and in such a way that most middle-
class families could afford a bit of it.
Queen Victoria, who began her reign in 1837, was no frivo¬
lous and extravagant Marie Antoinette. Victoria’s relentlessly
middle-class virtues and domesticity had a great influence on
fashions in general and jewelry in particular. Suddenly it was
fashionable for even highly born ladies and gentlemen to dress
modestly and wear modest and affordable jewelry.
76
Queen Victoria’s Influence on
Style
Queen Victoria’s personal tastes greatly influenced fashions in
jewelry. The queen had a great admiration for things Scottish
and started a vogue in Scottish jewelry—silver pieces in the
form of antique Highland shoulder brooches, knots, buckles,
crests, and swords, set with yellow or golden Cairngorm quartz
gemstones and vividly colored, contrasting agates, often inlaid in
intricate, very lovely quasi-plaid patterns that incorporated the
natural banding of the stones. Englishwomans Domestic During the Victorian
Magazine in 1867 had this to say: “Scotch jewelry, as well as era, jewelry pieces
Scotch costume, is de rigueur and the badges of the different featuring flowers or
clans are worn as brooches, earrings, buckles and shoe rosettes.”48 a romantic love
Victoria’s marriage for love to her handsome cousin Prince theme were in
Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha made sentimentality and fashion.
,v •' v;'k * ' 1&S& UtiSW*'

h y-X "P
^ vr ' .
ft'-
** fjj** V•
v?) • #
ww
romance fashionable, and with it a wide variety of sentimental
jewelry. Parures in the style of “the fruiting vine”—emblem of
married love and childbearing—and other symbolic plant and
flower motifs were very popular: “Such necklaces ... were large¬
ly indebted to the naturalistic motifs in favour at the time: clus¬
ters of fruit and berries alternating with leaves. Among the most
common were those designed as fruiting vines. Entwined
sprays of leaves and flowers such as ivy, orange blossoms, roses
and forget-me-nots were also in vogue and were often used to
symbolize love and affection.”49
These motifs often played on the Language of Flowers. In
an era when overt expressions of love were considered improp¬
er, lovers exchanged messages with one another by means of
flowers, or jewelry in the shape of flowers, to each of which a
special meaning was attached. This form of communication
became known as the Language of Flowers.
In keeping with the reverence for married love, ladies wore
simple gold or silver rings engraved or embossed with the word
“Mizpah” as keeper rings for their wedding bands, symbolizing
the biblical quotation, “The Lord watch between me and thee,
when we are absent one from another” (Gen. 31:49). They were
quite innocent of the real implications of the word in the origi¬
nal Bible passage: “For the narrative depicts Jacob and Laban,
long suspicious of each other and here finding a special cause for
mistrust, invoking God as a protection against the possible
cupidity of the other. Further bearing out this meaning of the
passage, the Hebrew word ‘mizpah’ means ‘watch tower’ and
refers to a boundary marker to keep the two apart.”50
When Albert gave his wife a necklace in the form of a
serpent—symbol of wisdom, life, and eternity—with a heart-
shaped pendant dangling from its jaws, snake jewelry, some of it
modeled on Greek and Roman archaeological finds, became a
fashionable necessity.
Mourning Jewelry
After Albert’s tragic death at the age of forty-one, Victoria went
into deep mourning for him that continued for the rest of her

life, and mourning jewelry became a more or less enforced A gold locket with
vogue. Ladies wore complete parures of glittering, faceted jet: portraits of Queen
“Materials such as jet were originally intended for mourning, but Victoria and Prince
noteworthy people, such as Victorian opera singer Adelina Patti, Albert, along with
made jet a desirable fashion accessory whether one was in two locks of hair.
mourning or not.”51
Portrait lockets, which had been in vogue for centuries,
acquired a new popularity during Victorian times, especially
after the advent of photography made it possible to enshrine a
daguerreotype portrait of the beloved instead of the more costly
painted miniature. These lockets, worn as pendants or brooches,
became especially popular after the American Civil War, when
many brothers, husbands, and fiances met a premature death.
One peculiar manifestation of this preoccupation with death
and mourning was jewelry made from hair of loved ones, living
or deceased. Hair was most often woven into designs that were
set in brooches and rings, but it was also sometimes used to
make bracelets and necklaces.
The Victorians and Edwardians (a.d. 1815 to 1915) 79

Jewelry Making for the Middle
Class
During the Victorian era jewelry making for the middle class
came into vogue. Industrial advances, such as steam-powered
machines for stamping out gold and silver repousse work, made
jewelry less expensive. So did trends toward thinner, lighter set¬
tings that required less metal, and toward using cheaper materi¬
als such as semiprecious stones, glass, and even synthetic materi¬
als like gutta-percha, a hard rubber from which inexpensive
cameolike settings were stamped. Lapis lazuli once again became
popular, as did carnelian, malachite, and various sorts of agates.
Parures continued to be fashionable, and a distinction came
to be made between the full parure, which consisted of match¬
ing necklace, earrings, bracelets, one or more brooches, and per¬
haps rings and buckles for belt and shoes, and the demi-parure,
which consisted of two or three matching pieces.
The Grand Tour

During the 1800s most well-off middle-class families could
afford to vacation abroad, and railroads and steamships made
traveling practical and pleasant. This middle-class migration coin¬
cided with the remarkable archaeological discoveries being made
in Italy, where Pompeii and Herculaneum were beginning to be
systematically excavated, as were Etruscan tombs. The result was
that “Italy was the most popular destination for tourists, and . . .
they ... brought back substantial quantities of jewelry.”52
Italian history, Italian archaeology, Italian art, Italian mate¬
rials and artisans, and the wealth of the newly mobile middle
class of America, Britain, and northern Europe combined to
inspire some remarkable jewelry incorporating Italian cameos,
inlay work, and glass mosaic, as well as the styles of the
Etruscans, ancient Rome, and the Renaissance.
Cameo Jewelry
Cameos, a holdover from the empire period that was reinforced
by the Victorian enthusiasm for archaeology and Italian culture,

F Craftsman to the Czars:
Ujaf8 Peter Carl Faberge
eter Carl Faberge (1846-1920) belonged to a French Protestant

family that fled France in the 1600s and eventually settled in Russia.
Fie trained as a goldsmith, and besides working in his father's workshop
in St. Petersburg, volunteered at the Hermitage Museum, cataloging and
repairing the royal jewels. Working with the Russian goldsmith Michael
Perchin, he began to replicate the techniques used to make the
Hermitage treasures and eventually began to make copies of the objects
themselves. He became so good at it that Czar Alexander could not tell
which was the original and which was the copy. Faberge was made suppli¬
er to the imperial court as a reward for making the first of the famous
Faberge “surprise” Easter eggs as a gift for the czar’s wife Czarina Maria.
This first egg, according to Henry Charles Bainbridge in his book Peter
Carl Faberge, “was to all appearances an ordinary hen’s egg. It was of gold
enameled opaque white, and on being opened revealed a yolk also of
gold. The yolk opened, and
inside was a chicken made in
gold of different shades; within
the chicken was a model of the
Imperial crown, and inside this
hung a tiny ruby egg.”
The Surprise Mosaic Egg, created

by Peter Carl Faberge.
Henry Charles Bainbridge, Peter Carl Faberge. London: Spring Books, 1966, p. 70.
Cameo bracelets continued to be very popular, particularly in parures. Hardstone
such as this one cameos continued to be carved, and the intaglio also was popu¬
featuring Cupid, lar. Subjects for these demanding masterpieces were most often
Athena, and Mercury mythological, or at least classical. Such was the demand for
were popular during
cameo jewelry, however, that cameos began to be carved out of
the Victorian age.
the conch shells found in the sea off Naples, which were both
plentiful and easier to work than hard stone. While the finest of
these shell cameos are also genuine works of art, the vast major¬
ity were produced quickly and featured simple subjects that
appealed to Victorian sentimentality: birds and flowers, cupids,
noncontroversial goddesses like Hebe and Psyche (modestly
draped), and most popular of all, the pretty young girl with flow¬
ers in her hair and (if the purchaser could afford it) genuine dia¬
mond jewelry inset.

Also popular was the “lava” cameo, so named because the
carvers traded on the romantic notion that it was made from the
lava from Mt. Vesuvius. In fact, lava cameos “are not actually
carved in lava, but rather the dark colored limestones that are
indigenous to the region around Pompeii . . . the local jewelers
and carvers of the 1800s used the romance of Pompeii’s volcano
and lava flows in an effort to sell their wares.”53 Many lava
cameos featured the portrait of a famous artist, poet, or philoso¬
pher, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Petrarch, Dante, or Socrates.
Bracelets of linked cameos depicting the pantheon of classical
gods or the gods of the week (Diana, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter,
Venus, Saturn, and Apollo) were also popular.
Petra Dura and Micromosaie

Both Florence and Rome were popular tourist meccas, and An example of a
few Victorian visitors went home without a sample of either petra dura tabletop;
Florentine mosaic (petra or pietra dura) or Roman mosaic also known as
(micromosaic). Petra dura, which is still produced Florentine mosaic.
today, is not really mosaic but inlay work,
which consists of “small pieces of cut
stone (often coral, marble, mala¬
chite, turquoise, lapis-lazuli and
opal), cemented in a pattern
into recesses in, usually, a
black marble background.
The designs were often
floral.”54
In fact, petra dura has
been made since the
Renaissance; the Palazzo
Pitti in Florence displays
great tables finished with it,
depicting mythological scenes
surrounded by garlands of fruit
and flowers. The loveliest pieces
use the natural striations and marbling
of the stone to create the effect of shading.
The Victorians and Edwardians (a.d. 1815 to 1915) 83

Micromosaic (miniature mosaic) was a Victorian phenome¬
non, although something of the sort is still produced under the
name of “Italian mosaic.” Let the buyer beware: This
tourist “jewelry” is crude indeed compared to the
delicate work of the 1800s. True Victorian
micromosaic is made from tiny bits of glass
(tesserae) set into a black glass frame:
“Minute subtly coloured tesserae, usual¬
ly cut from thin glass rods, were
arranged in mastic or cement on a
glass panel using pointed tweezers.
When all were in place, the gaps were
filled with coloured wax and the sur¬
face was polished. Although birds and
flowers were popular subjects, the most
typical motifs were the buildings and ruins
of Rome.”55 The work is sometimes so fine it
is hard to distinguish it from painting.
A micromosaic
brooch circa 1860. Classical and Renaissance
The central Revivalism
medallion is made
The Renaissance monuments of Florence, the ruins of Rome,
up of minute glass
and the archaeological discoveries of the Etruscans and Pompeii
cubes, or tesserae,
combined to inspire an enthusiasm for Italian revivalist styles.
of differing shades
Prompted by his artist friend Michelangelo Catena, Fortunato
of colors.
Pio Castellani and after him his sons Alessandro and Augusto
pioneered a fashion in “archaeological” jewelry inspired by
Etruscan and Pompeian discoveries. The Castellanis also refined
the art of micromosaic.
The Castellanis and Carlo Giuliano in Italy and Franfois-
Desire Froment-Meurice, Frederic-Jules Rudolphi, and Jules
Wiese in France promoted a Renaissance revival style that rein¬
troduced the fine modeling and skilled enameling that charac¬
terize Renaissance jewelry. So masterful was their workmanship
that it is sometimes difficult to tell their Renaissance revival
pieces from actual Renaissance jewels.

The long and peaceful Victorian era came to an end with the
death of Victoria. The period that followed, known as the
Edwardian era, formed a brief transition between the Victorian
era and the beginnings of the modern world.
The Edwardians
The Edwardian era takes its name from England’s Edward VII,
also known as Bertie or Tum-Tum, England’s last merry
monarch. It extended from the death of Victoria in 1901 to the
outbreak of World War I in 1914. It was mainly characterized
not so much by high-society misbehavior, although there was a
general relaxing of Victorian stuffiness, as by a growth of politi-
Sentimental Oddity:
* Hair Jewelry
Tair jewelry was the oddest of sentimental oddities of a sentimental

X JLage. Originally it was made by loving hands at home, out of one's
own hair, the hair of a beloved relation, or best of all, the hair of a beloved
dead relation. Normally, hair artfully braided or worked into delicate pic¬
torial effects with seed pearls (for tears) was to be found in brooches and
rings, but it was also made into bracelets, and necklaces complete with a
locket for a painted miniature or daguerreotype of the dear one. Hair
jewelry was particularly well suited to the mourning fashions of the later
Victorian era.
Where did all the hair come from to make these articles? Most ladies’
dressing tables during the 1800s and early 1900s contained an article
known as a hair receiver, a glass or porcelain bowl with a hole in the lid.
Into this the lady poked hair plucked from her brush and comb; when the
hair receiver was full, the contents were transferred to a cloth bag to be
saved for making jewelry and “ratts,” pads for puffing up milady's hairdo.
Books on the ins and outs of making hair jewelry were popular through¬
out the 1800s.
cal liberalism, particularly the women’s movement and the labor
movement. Crinolines and bustles gave way to straight skirts and
then to rising hemlines as women marched out into public life.
In some circles jewelry kept pace with the trend; in others it was
worn by society dames who regarded trends with icy indifference.
Edwardian Jewelry: Tastes

Diverge
Edwardian jewelry split along socioeconomic lines. The upper
crust (English aristocracy and American industrialists) favored a
frosty echo of the rococo: diamonds and pearls. As silver had
been the rococo metal of choice for setting diamonds, so plat¬
inum was for the Edwardian elite. Edwardian diamond jewelry
has been described as “Lace translated into platinum and dia¬
monds.”56 The strength of platinum made it possible to create
very delicate, almost invisible settings, and what little metal did
show blended with the whiteness of the stones. “Diamonds and
pearls set in platinum were favored for their white-on-white
color scheme, and sense of refined elegance and luxury.”57 Alloys
of white gold were developed as a cheap substitute for platinum.
High fashion demanded parures built around diamond or
pearl choker necklaces that recalled the rococo esclavage and cas¬
cading diamond and pearl pendant earrings. The late Victorian
and the Edwardian taste in diamonds was sustained by the dis¬
covery of rich diamond deposits in South Africa.
Sometimes the Edwardian white-on-white was relieved by
one or two colored stones. Some subversive ladies combined
emeralds and amethysts with their diamonds. The initials for the
colors of the stones (green, white, violet), stood for “Give women
the vote.” The daughters of these would-be New Women turned
to the art world to inspire their fashions in jewelry.
Art Nouveau: The Fluid

Fantasy
The young and avant-garde of the Edwardian era favored Art
Nouveau over echoes of rococo style. The movement that

became known as l’Art Nouveau began in France in the late
1880s and 1890s and in time influenced all the decorative arts.
In its jewelry art and fashion merged, and for the first time jew¬
elry came to be thought of as wearable art.
Art Nouveau emphasized the beauties of nature, particular¬
ly flower and plant forms, and the sinuous, erotic elegance of the
female form. But it also incorporated insects such as grasshop¬
pers and wasps, and other creatures not usually thought of as
beautiful. Many pieces reveal a sinister preoccupation with deca¬
dence, decay, and death. It is characterized by languorous, fluid
curves and a naturalistic lack of formal symmetry. The Art
Nouveau movement was strongly influenced by the late 1800s
craze for Japanese art.
The greatest of the Art Nouveau artist-jewelers was Rene
Lalique (1860-1945). Like the Russian goldsmith Peter Carl
Faberge, he promoted the idea that a piece of jewelry is a work
of art with intrinsic value in its own right, over and above the
precious materials it is made of. Lalique did not hesitate to com¬
bine precious metals and gems with unconventional materials
like horn, rock crystal, and glass to create the effects he wanted.
This Art Nouveau

plaque created by
Rene Lalique depicts
a pansy made of
gold, enamel, and
diamonds.
The Truly Weird:
Taxidermic Jewelry
O ne of the side effects of extensive Victorian traveling was a fascina¬

tion with animal life encountered abroad. Often this fascination led
to a desire to bring it back dead and wear it, the camera not being a
viable alternative in the Victorian world.
That an interest in Egyptian art led to a craze for necklaces made
from brightly colored beetles was peculiar enough. Of course the high¬
land practice of making grouse claws into kilt pins had been around for
years. But Victorian travelers to foreign climes also adopted an unfortu¬
nate habit of bringing back rare creatures to be made into “novelty" jew¬
elry, in something of the same spirit that Edwardian ladies decorated
their hats with stuffed birds and nearly wiped out whole species in the
process. Among its holdings the British Museum has a necklace made of
gold mountings covered with feathers plucked from the heads and
breasts of exotic hummingbirds.
He made masterful and original use of enamels. When l’Art

Nouveau began to go out of fashion, he turned his attention to
glass art, and it is for this that he is best known today.
The changes that rocked the western world between the end
of the 1700s and the beginning of the 1800s were nothing com¬
pared to the series of cataclysms that brought the comfortable
world of the Victorians and Edwardians to an end. In 1914
World War I broke out in Europe. This war, followed by the
Russian Revolution, the Great Depression, the atrocities of the
Nazis, and the Second World War, ushered in a world that
Queen Victoria and King Edward VII could not have imagined.
Some of what that world considers jewelry, they would not even
recognize.

The Modem
Jeweler's Art
I ndividualism seems to be the key to modern jewelry design.

Jewelers mn the gamut from the elegant traditionalism of the
Tiffany diamond necklace to eye-catching modern-art-to-wear.
There is a great eclecticism to modern jewelry making; that is, the
willingness to combine conventional precious materials with
highly unconventional ones, precious or otherwise, in highly
unconventional ways (what Renaissance goldsmith could have
foreseen gutta-percha or Bakelite, acrylic or “found objects” as
material for the jewelers art?). The modern jeweler may draw
inspiration from the masterpieces of the past or go off in com¬
pletely new and unexpected directions. Trends suggest that mod¬
ern jewelry must above all suit the individual taste of the wearer
and the wearer’s individual lifestyle. Science is also having an
increasing impact on the jewelers art both in the creation of new
materials and techniques and in the refinement of existing ones.
The Technology of Jewelry

Making
One great change in jewelry creation between the present and
past centuries is in the technology used to create it. Until the
89
middle of the 1800s the tools and techniques that jewelers used
were not very different from those used in ancient Sumer and
Egypt. Stone and bronze tools gave way to tools of iron and later
steel. Precious stones became more varied and more plentiful.
But otherwise, with the exception of the development of refrac¬
tive diamond cutting and the faceting of colored stones in the
1600s and 1700s, very little had changed. The Industrial
Revolution brought machinery for mass-producing gold and sil¬
ver jewelry and the development of some new materials such as
gutta-percha and goldstone. But it was really the great wars and
the machine industries of the twentieth century and the techno¬
logical advances that came out of them that drastically changed
how jewelry is made today.
The greatest change to jewelry making in the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries is technological precision. Techniques that
once depended on the jeweler’s eye and sixth sense can now be
performed with mechanical precision. For example, where gold¬
smiths once used kilns fueled with charcoal and regulated with
bellows, today they use casting ovens with precision temperature
controls. The result is a finer quality of jewelry and a union of
art and science that makes the career of a jeweler easier and
more satisfying.
Power-assisted tools that combine machine power with the
jeweler’s skill are also making the jeweler’s job easier; for exam¬
ple, the air-powered hammer which the goldsmith uses for
doing repousse or chiseling out channel work. The goldsmith’s
artistic skill still guides the process, but the machine supplies the
force that once had to be provided by human muscle.
Laser Technology
Laser technology has given jewelers the ability to work directly
on pieces of jewelry with more precision than ever before. Laser
welding has replaced the jewelers soldering torches, powered by
butane or propane, that had not long before replaced the jewel¬
er’s kiln. Laser welding allows such precision in the jeweler’s
work that, for example, stones need not be removed when jew¬
elry is being repaired, and jewelers can perform tasks that once

Laser welders such
as this one allow
jewelers to work
directly on pieces
of jewelry with exact
precision.
would have been either impossible or too time-consuming to be

cost-effective, such as creating special finishing details. Com¬
puter-controlled lasers are being used to cut diamonds with
greater precision and regularity than can be done by hand.
Metallurgy and Gemology

Two other areas in which great scientific advances have been
made are metallurgy, or the science of refining and working
metals, and gemology, the study of precious and semiprecious
stones. Advances in metallurgy have produced new alloys that
produce superior jewelry. Where once white gold had to be plat¬
ed with rhodium to make it truly white, new alloys using beryl¬
lium, ruthenium, and palladium, intrinsic in the metal, now cre¬
ate a white gold without the need of plating that eventually
wears away. The same alloys are being used to make silver that
does not tarnish. Metallurgists are working with palladium
alone as a jeweler’s metal; it has many of the same qualities as
platinum and is much less expensive.
A combination of metallurgy and chemistry has resulted in
new techniques for electroplating metals; that is, submerging
them in a chemical bath and passing an electrical current through
them that causes them to become coated with a thin layer of
The Modern Jeweler’s Art 91

A Modern Goldsmith:
From Hobby to Livelihood
any people pursue hobbies in their free time. Sometimes a per¬

son’s hobby can grow from a part-time activity into their full-time
profession. This is the case with Cary Lee Chase, a Santa Cruz, California,
jeweler. Jewelers are involved in the design, manufacture, repair, appraisal,
and sales of all forms of jewelry. Cary got into jewelry making by way of
cutting precious stones, which he started to do as a hobby in the early
1970s. In time, he began to sell his gems at craft shows and art fairs, and
eventually to jewelry stores. Dissatisfied with the settings other craftsmen
made for his stones, he began to experiment with metal working. He built
his first bench from two sawhorses and an old door, and began to make
silver jewelry with a butane jeweler's torch.
Between 1979 and 1982, Gary studied with the Gemological
Institute of America, and earned the title of Graduate Gemologist. He
worked for a time for John Sumita, a retail jeweler in San Francisco, before
establishing his own trade shop to do repairs, sizing, and custom work for
guild-division (high-quality) jewelry stores. He opened his own jewelry
store in 1990. His work consists mainly of designing and making custom
jewelry.
In an interview with
the author, Cary says
of his hobby-turned-
livelihood, “I love com¬
ing in to work every
day.”
jeweler Gary Chase at his

work bench.
another material. Advances in chemistry have made possible
attractive new plating techniques such as black rhodium plating.
New nontoxic chemical baths have replaced the highly poisonous
ones that took such a toll on the workers who used them.
New ways have been developed to artificially produce both
high-quality man-created precious stones (stones created by
growing crystals in a laboratory under appropriate conditions
of heat and pressure) and inexpensive synthetic gemstones
(stones manufactured from melted-down minerals that produce
a convincing appearance without careful attention to the
authenticity of the crystalline structure). Advances have also
been made in treating stones with either heat and pressure or Goldsmith Gary
diffusion of chemicals into the surface of the stones to enhance Chase uses a
or change their color. jeweler’s microscope
to appraise a
Subatomic Physics gemstone.
The electron microscope, which uses a
beam of electrons instead of visible light
to produce images of objects smaller than
the wave length of visible light, has had a
huge impact on gemologists’ understand¬
ing of the molecular structure of precious
stones. This technology is turning out to
be a two-edged sword. On the one hand,
it makes it easier for reputable gemolo¬
gists to identify synthetic and man-created
stones and for reputable manufacturers to
grow high-quality man-created crystals
by increasing their understanding of the
crystalline structure of precious stones
and the conditions required to recreate it.
On the other hand, a deeper understand¬
ing of the structure of gemstones makes it
easier for unscrupulous dealers to create
convincing fakes, like a recent influx of
diffusion-treated pink-orange padparad-
scha sapphires from Thailand.

The color of diamonds can be changed by irradiating them
with subatomic particles, then annealing them in a heat-
treatment process to alter or intensify their color. This is usually
done to turn ordinary white diamonds with less than perfect
color into more valuable colored diamonds, although these
treated diamonds are not as valuable as the very rare natural col¬
ored diamonds. Most blue, green, orange, and pink diamonds
used in jewelry today have been treated.
Molecular analysis has initiated some new trends like dia¬
mond cutting following the structure of the individual stone
instead of adhering to traditional styles of faceted cutting. This
is necessary for some specialty stones like black diamonds, which
are notoriously idiosyncratic to work with.
Computer Software
The advent of computer technology made it possible for jewel¬
ers to design pieces of jewelry much more easily and also with
greater precision. Processes such as CAD/CAM design that
once were available only to large corporations because they were
enormously expensive, have become affordable to most inde¬
pendent jewelers through the funnel-down effect of new tech¬
nology. Instead of carving the wax model for lost wax casting
directly, goldsmiths today use a CAD/CAM application to
design wax carvings electronically, then send the result to a mill
that machine-carves the wax model and returns it to the gold¬
smith for final finishing and texturing by hand. Jewelers also use
CAD/CAM to design dies for stamping. The end product is
much more detailed than if it had been done by hand and much
less expensive to produce in terms of time and labor, a benefit
that can be passed along to the customer.
Twentieth-Century Movements
The two main jewelry movements of the twentieth century, Art
Deco and Retro, were strongly influenced by industrial shapes
and forms and by the two world wars. The most obvious trends
in jewelry making since the middle of the 1900s, however, have
been toward an increasing individualism and disregard for the

dictates of the fashion industry, and toward rapidly changing
styles, with many different ones in effect at the same time. This
individualism began with the Studio Art Movement following
World War II, and was further influenced by “hippie” counter-
culturalism and the women’s liberation movement, which
encouraged people in general and women in particular to assert
themselves and wear whatever they liked and could afford. The
trend toward many different, rapidly changing styles is at least
partly due to the communication revolution that began with tel¬
evision and exploded in the 1990s with the Internet and the
World Wide Web.
Art Deco (1920 to 1930) and

Retro (1935 to 1949)
There is something about war that brings out the assertive in
jewelry design. Art Deco came out of the conflagration of
This jewel clip is

an example of the
geometric Art Deco
design.
World War I; Retro was an outgrowth of World War II.
Although they are very different in style, both feature big, bold,
in-your-face motifs and lots of color.
Art Deco, reacting against the supple curves and subtle col¬
ors of Art Nouveau, drew upon geometric and mechanical
shapes. French designer Paul Iribe, in 1930, promoted the “sac¬
rifice [of] the flower on the altar of Cubism and the machine.”58
While the movement courted the wealthy with colored stones
and black onyx in a pavement of diamonds set in platinum on
the old Edwardian model, elsewhere it ran to semiprecious
stones like lapis lazuli, amber, and coral, and materials such as
glass and Bakelite in large, chunky, boldly colored' pieces. The
classic Art Deco look is associated with jewelers like Cartier.
Retro was named by Francois Curiel of Christie’s New York
in the 1970s, but it was inspired by European designers, many of
whom had fled to America, as a finger in the eye of the German
aggressor during World War II. “In Paris, the house of Cartier
responded to the German defeat of France in apt fashion. It
showed its unbowed spirit by creating its fanciful animalier style.
Animal figures in gold, studded with gems and enhanced by
shining enamel, reaffirmed the power of joy and beauty in the
face of the Nazi occupation.”59
Since platinum was co-opted by the war effort, retro pieces
are mostly of gold and rose gold—large, flamboyant three-
dimensional pieces set with aquamarine, amethyst, citrine,
topaz, and synthetic colored gems. It favored explosive loops,
floral sprays, and bows suggesting Fourth-of-July fireworks, as
well as the animalier style.
The Studio Jewelry Movement

(1940 to Present)
The idea of jewelry as wearable art, introduced by Lalique, is still
in force. In fact, much of what is called art jewelry is art first and
only incidentally wearable. Art jewelry began with the Studio
Art Movement, which was started as rehabilitation therapy for
World War II veterans and branched out into as many different
96 The J eweler’s Art

“The Dancer/' a
brooch designed by
American studio
jeweler Ed Wiener
circa 1947, is a well-
known example of
mid-twentieth
century studio
jewelry.
styles and directions as there were designers. The Studio Art

Movement underlies the strong individuality of fashions in jew¬
elry today.
Studio art jewelry did follow certain trends. Design analyst
Susan Grant Lewin says of the movement, “The leitmotif that
bound all of these studio jewelers together was the desire to
apply the then current tenets of modernism, such as biomor¬
phism, primitivism, and constructivism to jewelry.”60
Biomorphism follows organic shapes, including microorgan¬
isms; primitivism is inspired by the folk art of so-called primi¬
tive people; constructivism incorporates architectural forms and
geometric shapes.
The Studio Art Movement also carried the Art Nouveau
disregard for precious materials to the ultimate extreme,

Antipreciousism. In combination with precious metals and pre¬
cious and semiprecious stones, jewelry was made out of base
metals such as copper, iron, steel, and aluminum; hardware such
as plumbing supplies, paper clips, typewriter keys; and most
recently and effectively, computer components; plastics, wood,
stones, beads and buttons, textiles and leather, newspaper clip¬
pings, papier mache, and found objects.
The Pop and Funk spin-offs from the Studio Art
Movement contributed social commentary and shock effect.
Says Lewin, “This was jewelry intended to shock, and it did.
Ken Cory . . . employed organic, sensual forms of cast plastic or
leather with copper, stones, often narrative enamelwork, and
found objects.”61 The “narrative enamelwork” was often obscene
or political in nature, and the design of the jewelry was often
explicitly sexual or political.
Studio jewelry artists explored surface effects such as three-
dimensional constructions, texture, and the application of textile
arts such as knitting and crocheting to metal. Special color
effects were achie ved with the use of precious and semiprecious
stones, with emphasis not on their value but on the way their
colors and textures interacted. New styles and materials in
enameling were explored, as were combinations of precious and
base metals, and new metals such as “titanium, tantalum, and
niobium, all of which change color when exposed to specific
electric currents while immersed in an electrolytic solution.”62
Raw crystals of precious and semiprecious stones were incorpo¬
rated for their unusual color and textural effects.
Some of this wearable art was wearable only if the wearer
was a professional model who knew how to move very, very
carefully. Lewin says of one artist-jeweler that he “viewed the
body as an armature [support] for the work, an extraordinary
and unprecedented concept for his day.”63
Lewin sums up modern art jewelry by saying, “All in all, we
have come full circle from the nascence of what some now call
American art jewelry. . . . American jewelry had never been so
rich in technical expertise, material diversity, formal innovation,
and sheer energy.”64

A Spirit of Adventure
Barbara Cartlidge, author of Twentieth-Century Jewelry, has
this to say of fashions in jewelry from 1970 onward:
By the early 1970s, the last vestiges of etiquette in

clothing and jewellery had really disappeared: “any¬
thing goes.” Although there were still social groups, it
was hard to distinguish them by their jewellery. For
some people, it will always be important to have very
expensive, precious jewelry, but this is now a matter of
personal choice (and being able to afford it) rather than
a social “must.”65
This unique brass

collar, designed by
famed American
studio jeweler Art
Smith in the 1950s,
is a prime example
of “wearable art.”
In other words, the spirit imbuing modern jewelers and jew¬
elry wearers is not very different from that of the Renaissance in
its delight in exploration and imagination and particularly in its
strong emphasis on individualism, both in the artist-jeweler and
in the wearer.
Although there have been many reasons for wearing jewelry
down through the centuries—social and political prestige, reli¬
gious or magical significance, sentiment—the principal reason
for wearing jewelry today is enjoyment. Whether a person buys
it from a jeweler, makes it, or works with a goldsmith to select
materials and design pieces, jewelry is above all an expression of
personal taste, and wearing it should be a joyous experience.

Noces
Chapter 1: Ancient Times (to 10. Quoted in Hellenic Silver- and

500 b.c.) Goldsmith Centre, Greek Jewelry.
1. Quoted in P.R.S. Moorey, “Ur of the 11. Quoted in Hellenic Silver- and
Chaldees': A Revised and Updated Goldsmith Centre, Greek Jewelry.
Edition of Sir Leonard Woolleys 12. Gregorietti, Jewelry Through the Ages,
Excavations at Ur. Ithaca, NY: Cor¬ p. 30.
nell University Press, 1982, pp. 13. Pliny (Gaius Plinius Secundus) the
58-59. Elder, Loeb Classical Library: Natural
2. Quoted in Moorey, “Ur of the History, IX.58, trans. H. Rackham.
Chaldees,” p. 67. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
3. Quoted in I.E.S. Edwards, The Press, 1983.
Treasures ofTutankhamun. New York: 14. Pliny, Natural History, XXXVII.4.
Viking, 1972, p. 34. 15. Pliny, Natural History, XXXVII.76.
4. Hans Wolfgang Muller and Eber- 16. Associated Press, “Field Museum
hard Thiem, Gold of the Pharaohs. Exhibit Focuses on Death in Pom¬
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, peii,” October 22, 2005. http://cbs2
chicago.com/topstories/local_story_
1999, p. 30.
295141843.html.
5. Muller and Thiem, Gold of the Pha¬
17. John Ward-Perkins and Amanda
raohs, p. 32.
Claridge, Pompeii, A.D. 79. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978, p. 135.
raohs, p. 29.
Chapter 3: The Early Middle
raohs, p. 25.
Ages (a.d. 500 to 1000)
Chapter 2: The Greeks and the 18. Quoted in Hellenic Silver- and
Goldsmith Centre, Greek Jewelry.
Romans (500 b.c. to a.d. 500)
19. Quoted in Hellenic Silver- and
8. Quoted in Hellenic Silver- and
Goldsmith Centre, Greek Jewelry.
Goldsmith Centre, Greek Jewelry:
20. Robert Browning, Justinian and
5000 Years of Tradition, www.add.gr/
Theodora. New York: Praeger, 1971,
jewel/elka/ index.html.
p. 69.
9. Guido Gregorietti, Jewelry Through
21. Shaquilat Sergius, “Iconography of San
the Ages. New York: American Heri¬
Vitale,” Ancient Worlds: Byzantium.
tage, 1969, p. 64.
101
www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Post/ 38. Central European University,
350801. “Medieval Jewelry.” www.ceu.hu/
22. Sergius, “Iconography of San Vitale.” medstud/manual/SRM/jewel.htm.
23. Quoted in Roman Finds Group, 39. Evans, A History of Jewelry, p. 83.
“New Finds, Autumn 2003.” www. 40. Vogue Gioiello, “The Jewelry of
romanfmdsgroup.org.uk/fmds.html. Madonnas and Queens.” www.vogue
24. Gregorietti, Jewelry Through the Ages, gioiello.net/06per/perle/01sto/0505/
p. 139. eindex.asp.
25. Gregorietti, Jewelry Through the Ages,
p. 139. Chapter 6: Baroque and Rococo
26. Jeff Clarke, “Viking Ornamentation (a.d. 1600 to 1815)
Styles.” http://mahan.wonkwang.ac. 41. Gregorietti, Jewelry Through the Ages,
kr/link/ m ed/viking/vikorn. htm. p. 212.
42. Mascetti and Triossi, The Necklace, p.
Chapter 4: The Romanesque 59.
and Gothic Eras (a.d. 1000 to 43. Mascetti and Triossi, The Necklace, p.
1450) 59.
27. Gregorietti, Jewelry Through the Ages, 44. Mascetti and Triossi, The Necklace, p.
p. 149. 63.
28. Gregorietti, Jewelry Through the Ages, 45. Mascetti and Triossi, The Necklace, p.
p. 149. 61.
29. Gregorietti, Jewelry Through the Ages, 46. Gregorietti, Jewelry Through the Ages,
p. 150. p. 239.
30. Gregorietti, Jewelry Through the Ages, 47. Gregorietti, Jewelry Through the Ages,
p. 150. p. 237.
31. Gregorietti, Jewelry Through the Ages,
p. 154. Chapter 7: The Victorians and
32. Joan Evans, A History of Jewelry: Edwardians (a.d. 1815 to 1915)
1100-1870. Boston: Boston Book 48. Ginny Redington Dawes and
and Art, 1970, p. 53. Corinne Davidov, Victorian Jewelry:
33. Evans, A History of Jewelry, p. 55. Unexplored Treasures. New York:
Abbeville, 1991, p. 90.
Chapter 5: The Renaissance 49. Mascetti and Triossi, The Necklace, p.
(a.d. 1450 to 1600) 87.
34. Daniela Mascetti and Amanda 50. Roy B. Chamberlin and Herman
Triossi, The Necklace: From Antiquity Feldman, eds., Dartmouth Bible, 2nd
to the Present. New York: Harry N. ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961,
Abrams, 1997, p. 53. p. 76.
35. Evans, A History of Jewelry, p. 81. 51. Dawes and Davidov, Victorian
36. Gregorietti, Jewelry Through the Ages, Jewelry, p. 124.
p. 190. 52. Claire Phillips, Jewels and Jewelry:
37. Gregorietti, Jewelry Through the Ages, 500 Years of Western Jewelry from the
pp. 190-92. World-Renowned Collection of the

Victoria and Albert Museum. New Chapter 8: The Modern
York: Watson-Guptill, 2000, p. 74.
Jeweler’s Art
53. The Jewelry Experts, Bijoux Extra¬ 58. Quoted in Phillips, Jewels and
ordinaire, Ltd., “Victorian Lava Jewelry, p. 112.
Cameos.” www.jewelryexpert.com/ 59. Mondera, “Retro 1940-1949.” www.
catalog/ cameo4.htm. mondera.com/learn/retro. asp?nmc
54. Anita Mason and Dianne Packer, An ssid=classid%3Dlll.
Illustrated Dictionary of Jewelry. New 60. Susan Grant Lewin, One of a Kind:
York: Harper & Row, 1974, p. 250. American Art Jewelry Today. New
55. Phillips, Jewels and Jewelry, p. 74. York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994, p. 34.
56. R.F. Moeller Jeweler, “Edwardian 61. Lewin, One of a Kind, p. 40.
Jewelry.” www.rfmoeller.com/estate/ 62. Lewin, One of a Kind, p. 53.
edwardia.htm. 63. Lewin, One of a Kind, p. 35.
57. Antique Jewelry Online, “Edwardian 64. Lewin, One of a Kind, p. 56.
Jewelry. ” www. antiquej ewelryonline. 65. Quoted in Phillips, Jewels and
com/learn/edwardian.htm. Jewelry, p. 124.
Notes 103
alloy: A mixture or amalgam of two or engrave: To hammer or carve a design into
more metals. a surface.
Antipreciousism: A movement that pro¬ Funk: An art movement of the 1960s that
motes the use of nonprecious materials in used unconventional materials, often
the making of jewelry. found objects, to create visually shocking
images with social relevance.
Art Nouveau: A movement in the decora¬
tive arts in the late 1800s and early 1900s, iconography: A set of traditional symbol¬
featuring undulating, flowing curves, an ic forms and figures associated with a sub¬
emphasis on natural forms, and in jewelry, ject, particularly Christianity.
the use of unconventional materials such as
man-created stone: A man-made pre¬
horn, ivory, and glass.
cious stone grown from a crystal under
brooch: A large decorative pin or clasp. the proper conditions of heat and pres¬
sure. Its molecular and crystalline struc¬
Byzantium: The Eastern Roman Empire
ture is identical to those of its natural
with its seat at Constantinople.
equivalent.
cameo: A relief carving in stone against a
metallurgy: The science of refining and
flat background, particularly one in which
the color of the carving contrasts with the working metals and understanding their
background. properties.
casting: Pouring molten metal into a mold naturalism: The practice of depicting
in which it solidifies. subjects as realistically as possible in the
visual arts.
classical: Of Greek history, pertaining to
the period between 500 and 400 B.C. Of neoclassical: A style of jewelry derived
art and culture, pertaining to the Greeks from classical Greece and Rome, featuring
and the Romans. simple lines, gold work, and opaque or
cabochon stones and cameos.
diadem: A crown or ornamental headdress.
parure: A matched set of jewelry consist¬
die: A tool used for molding or stamping ing of a necklace, earrings, bracelets, one or
designs in metal.
more brooches, and possibly rings, hair
104
ornaments, and buckles. A demi-parure revivalist style: A style imitating the style
(“half-parure”) is a set of two or three or styles of an earlier time.
matching pieces. semiprecious stone: Any gemstone other
Pop: An art movement in the early than the diamond, emerald, ruby, sapphire,
1960s that used images from everyday or precious amethyst.
life to comment on the banality of zoomorphic: Animal-shaped, or having
society. animal-shaped elements.
Glossary 105
1^ For Further Recidin
Books Knopf, 1978. Intelligently written and

Ginny Redington Dawes and Corinne beautifully illustrated catalog that
Davidov, Victorian Jewelry: Unexplored accompanied the 1979 traveling
Treasures. New York: Abbeville Press exhibit.
Publishers, 1991. Lavishly illustrated Michael Wood, In Search of the Dark Ages.
volume on the lesser-known aspects of New York: Facts On File, 1987.
Victorian jewelry. The sections on Scholarly and well-written discussion
agate jewelry and hair jewelry are of several early medieval figures and
especially good. archaeological finds, with informative
Katharine Stoddard Gilbert, ed., Treasures illustrations. Especially good on the
of Tutankhamun. New York: Ballan- Sutton Hoo ship burial.
tine, 1976. Beautifully illustrated cata¬
log that accompanied the 1979 travel¬ Periodicals
ing exhibit. Rick Gore, “After 2000 Years of Silence,
Ellen D. Reeder, ed., Scythian Gold: the Dead Do Tell Tales at Vesuvius,”
Treasures from Ancient Ukraine. New National Geographic, May, 1984.
York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999. Fascinating article about Sara Bisel’s
Lavishly illustrated catalog that forensic reconstructions of the dead of
accompanied the 1999-2001 traveling Herculaneum.
exhibit.
Marbeth Schon, Modernist Jewelry Web Sites
1930-1960: The Wearable Art Move¬ American Museum of Natural History
ment. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Books, (www.amnh.org). Good overview of
2004. A well-written exploration of the history of diamonds in jewelry.
the work of 175 of the most important Art of the First Cities: The Third Millen¬
American studio jewelers through four nium B.C. from the Mediterranean to
pivotal exhibitions held at the the Indus (www.metmuseum.org/ex
Museum of Modern Art (1946) and plore/First_Cities/firstcities_main.
The Walker Art Center in Minne¬ htm). A beautifully designed and de¬
apolis (1948,1955,1959). tailed site by the Metropolitan Muse¬
John Ward-Perkins and Amanda Claridge, um of Art that covers the earliest cities
Pompeii, A.D. 79. New York: Alfred A. from the Aegean to the Indus Valley.
106
The section on Sumeria and Ur is Very thoroughly illustrated overview
especially good. The zoom-in feature of Greek jewelry from prehistory to
on works of art is especially helpful. the present day, complete with dia¬
The British Museum Compass Collections grams of jewelry-making tools and
Online (www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/ techniques.
compass/ixbin/hixclient.exe?_IXDB_= Medieval Jewelry (www.ceu.hu/med-
compass&.search-form=graphical/ stud/manual/SRM/jewel.htm). Part of
main.html&submit-button=search). A the Web site of the Department of
wealth of information about the treasures Medieval Studies of Central European
of the British Museum, easily searchable. University. A scholarly and readable
Greek Jewelry: 5000 Years of Tradition source on medieval jewelry, its wearers,
(www. add.gr/j ewel/elka/index. html). and the artists who made it.
For Further Reading 107

Aigrette, 71, 72 Movement, 97 Curiel, Francis, 96
Albert (prince of Saxe- Byzantine empire
Coburg-Gotha), 77, 78, influences on jeweler’s art Diadems (crowns), 15
79, 80 of, 33-34 Greek, 22-23
Alloys jewelry of, 33, 34, 35 of Queen Puabi, 13-15
advances in metallurgy Romanesque, 52-53
and, 91 Cabochons, 18, 26 Diamonds
in goldwork, 12, 26 Cameos, 28 baroque developments in
Antipreciousism, 98 Gothic, 49-50 cutting, 64-65
Apollonides, 28 origin of, 28 changing color of, 94
Art Deco, 94, 95, 95-96 of Renaissance, 59, 61 in Edwardian jewelry, 86
Art Nouveau, 86-87, 87 Victorian, 80, 81, 82, 82 of Gothic era, 49
Canning Jewel, 61-62 refractive cutting of, 90
Bainbridge, Henry Carnavon, George of rococo era, 67, 69
Charles, 81 Herbert, Lord, 15 Dioscurides, 28
Band necklaces, 70-71 Carter, Howard, 15,18 Du Barry, Madame, 72
Baroque era, 63, 64-67 Cartier, 96
Beadwork Castellani family, 84 Earrings
Egyptian, 17-18 Casting, 24 Byzantine, 36
Greek/Roman, 26 Cartlidge, Barbara, 99 of Gothic era, 51-52
Sumerian, 11, 13 Cellini, Benvenuto, 58 Hellenistic, 23
Belts, jeweled, of Gothic Celtic knot, 41 of Renaissance, 57
era, 51 Chase, Gary Lee, 92, 92, Edward VIII (English
Blanche of Lancaster, 53 93 king), 84
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 75 Cloisonne, 17 Edwardian era, 85-86
Boticelli, 56 Columbus, Christopher, 55 Egypt, 16-19
Bracelets, cameo, 82 Computer software, 94 Electroplating, 91, 93
Brooches Costanza of Aragon Elizabeth I (English
Byzantine, 41 (Spanish queen), 47-48 queen), 57
of early Middle Ages, crown of, 48 Empire period, jewelry
39-40 Cronius, 28 styles of, 75
Gothic, 49, 50-51, 51 Croom, Alex, 39 Enamelwork
of Renaissance, 60-62 Crowns Egyptian, 17
rococo, 67, 69-70 of Costanza Greek, 26
Romanesque, 45 48 narrative, 98
of Studio Art See also Diadems Renaissance techniques
108
in, 58-59 55 Micromosaic, 83-84
Englishwomans Domestic Hair jewelry, 85 Middle Ages, early, 32,
Magazine, 77 Henry IV (English king), 38-39
Etruscans, 27 52 jewelry making in, 39-42
Henry VIII (English Sutton Hoo treasure,
Faberge, Peter Carl, 81 king), 56-57 42-43
Faience, 17 Herculaneum, 80 See also Byzantine empire
Feudalism, 45 Holbein, Hans, 56, 57-58 Modern jewelry
Florentine Rooster, 62 Hope, Henry Phillip, 68 materials of, 89
Founder’s Jewel, 51 Hope Diamond, 68, 68, 74 technology and, 90-91
93-94
Gemstones Industrial Revolution, 75, Molecular analysis, 93-94
baroque, 64-65 76, 90 Mosaics
in Byzantine jewelry, 36 Inlay work, Egyptian, 19 Byzantine, 36
in Edwardian jewelry, 86 Intaglio, 26, 28 Florentine, 83
molecular analysis of, Iribe, Paul, 96 micromOsaics, 83-84
93-94 Isabelle de Valois (French Motifs
Renaissance techniques princess), 52, 53 Art Deco, 96
in, 59 Byzantine, 34, 35
in rococo era, 65 Jellinge style, 41-43 of early Middle Ages, 39,
synthetic, 93 John the Fearless (Duke of 42
Girl with a Pearl Earring Burgundy), 50 Greek, 23
(Vanmeer), 66 Justinian (Byzantine rococo, 69-70
Giuliano, Carlo, 84 emperor), 38 Victorian, 77-78
Gold Mourning jewelry, 78-79
from the Americas, 55 Lalique, Rene, 87
Greek use of, 24-26 Language of Flowers, 78 Necklaces
qualities of, 12 Lapis lazuli, 13, 80 Art Deco, 95
Golden Helmet of Laser technology, 90-91, of Gothic era, 51-52
Mescalamdug, 12-13 91 of Marie Antoinette,
Goldsmiths Lollia Paulina, 26 72-74
Egyptian, 17 Lost wax method, 24 pearl, 65, 66
first distinction between Louis XIV (French king), rococo, 71-73
jewelers and, 49 68 Niello, 35-36, 43
of Gothic era, 52 Louis XV (French king), in Anglo Saxon jewelry,
modern technology and, 72 40
90, 91, 93 Louis XVI (French king), Noah Cameo, 50
of Renaissance, 60 68, 73
of Romanesque era, 46 Lovers Brooch, 51 Opus interassile, 35, 36
Gonzaga Cameo, 28
Gothic era, 48-53 Marie Antoinette, 63, 73 Palladium, 91
Greece, Ancient necklace of, 72-73 Pallavicino, Barbara, 56
jewelry making of, 21-22 Mazarin cut, 64 Parures, 30, 56
metalworking of, 22-26 Metalwork rococo, 70-72
Gutta-percha, 80 Greek, 24 Victorian, 80
of Hellenistic period, Patti, Adelina, 79
Hair, Renaissance style of, 22-26 Pearls
Index 109
in baroque jewelry, 60, 66 52,53 Technology, in modern
in Byzantine jewelry, 36 Rings jewelry making, 89-91,
Penannular brooch, 40 Byzantine, 35 93-94
Pendants, Renaissance-era, of renaissance, 57 Theodora (Byzantine
60 wedding, 78 empress), 36-38, 37
Perchin, Michael, 81 Riviere, 71-72 Tomb of Gold at Canosa,
Peruzzi cut, 64 Rococo era, 63-64 26
Peter Carl Faberge diamonds in, 69 Toutin, Jean, 67
(Bainbridge), 81 necklace styles of, 70-72 Tovsta Mohyla pectoral,
Petra dura, 83, 83 Romanesque era, 44-45 29
Platinum, 91, 99 jewelry making of, 44-47 Tutankhamen (Egyptian
Pliny the Elder, 26, 28 Romans pharaoh), 15, 18
Poison rings, 57 characteristics of jewelry burial mask of, 19, 19-20
Pompeii, 80 of, 31 Twentieth Century Jewelry
emerald necklace of, stonework of, 26, 28 (Cartlidge), 99
29-30 Rudolphi, Frederic-Jules,
excavations of, 28-29 84 Vermeer, Jan, 66
jewelry of, 30 Vespucci, Simonetta, 56
Portrait lockets, 79 Scythians, 29 Victoria (English queen),
Puabi (queen of Ur), 10, Self-adornment, 8 76, 77, 78, 79
15 Seymour, Jane, 56 Victorian era
diadem of, 13-15 Signet rings, 57 classical/Renaissance
Pyrgoteles, 28 Stasinopoulos, Elizabeth, revivalism in, 82, 83,
21-22, 23, 24-25, 35-36 84-85
Raedwald (king of East Stonework, 13 middle-class jewelry of,
Angles), 43 of Ancient Greece, 28 80
Religious jewelry Egyptian, 18 mourning jewelry of,
Byzantine, 35 Sumerian, 11 78-79
of Romanesque era, 46 Studio Art Movement, 95, taxidermic jewelry of, 88
Renaissance (1450-1600), 96-98, 97, 99
53 Subatomic physics, 91-92 Wearable art, 87, 96, 99
influences on jewelry of, Sumer, 11-15 Wiener, Ed, 97
55 Surprise Mosaic Egg Wiese, Jules, 84
jeweler’s techniques in, (Faberge), 81 Winston, Harry, 68
58-59 Sutton Hoo treasure, Woolley, Charles Leonard,
Repousse, 25 42-43 11, 12-13, 13-14
Retro, 95-96 Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste World War I, 88, 96
Ribbon bows, 66-67, 67 de, 65, 66, 74 World War II, 88, 96
Richard II (English king), Taxidermic jewelry, 88 Wykeham, William of, 51

Picture Credits
Cover: © Araldo de Luca/Corbis © Historical Picture Archive/CORBIS,

67
© Adam Woolfitt/CORBIS, 27 © Jonathan Blair/CORBIS, 41
© Archivo Iconografico, S.A./CORBIS, Mansell/Time Life Pictures/Getty
37, 55 Images, 28, 73
The Art Archive/Archeological Museum © Mary Evans Picture Library/The
Naples/Dagli Orti, 24, 30 Image Works, 15
The Art Archive/Dagli Orti, 70, 95 © Museum of London/HIP/The Image
The Art Archive/Private Collection/Dagli Works, 79
Orti; © 2007 Artists Rights Society © Peter Harholdt/CORBIS, 83
(ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris, 87 Photo by Don Barsell, 91, 92, 93
The Art Archive/Topkapi Museum Photo by Marbeth Schon; collection of
Istanbul/Dagli Orti, 71 Jill Crawford, 99
Arte & Immagini srl/CORBIS, 9, 36 Photo by Shirley Byrne; collection of
© Bettmann/CORBIS, 57 Marbeth Schon, 97
The British Museum/HIP/The Image © Roger Wood/CORBIS, 19
Works, 11,49,51,60, 77, 82 © Seat Archive/Alinari Archives/The
© Christie’s Images/CORBIS, 23 Image Works, 48
© Colin Anderson/CORBIS, 65 © Smithsonian Institution/CORBIS, 68
© Eliol Ciol/CORBIS, 82 © Tim Graham/CORBIS, 81
© Francis G. Mayer/CORBIS, 66 © Werner Forman/CORBIS, 33, 34, 35
111
About the Author
Katherine Macfarlane grew up in the Great Southwest

Desert and became a rock hound and fossil hunter almost as
soon as she could toddle. One of her happiest memories is of
going to dig trilobites and fossil fish with her father, carrying
her very own geologist’s hammer. Her interest in jewelry was
kindled by the beautiful Navajo and Zuni silver work she col¬
lected on vacations to the Grand Canyon.
Another of Katherine’s great loves is language. She start¬
ed reading spontaneously at about age three, and she has not
stopped yet. She studied Spanish as a child and Italian as an
undergraduate. She has a master’s degree in English philolo¬
gy (history of the English language) and a PhD in classics
(Greek and Latin studies). Katherine has been a writer all her
life; most recently, a technical writer for computer software.
Katherine is also deeply interested in history and archae¬
ology, with excursions into historical anthropology and pale¬
ontology. For relaxation, Katherine draws, paints, designs
jewelry, and watches birds with her four above-average cats.
The creative impulse is an ancient and enduring feature of
human expression. Art serves many purposes: to beautify,
record, reflect, enlighten, and celebrate our existence. Eye on
Art examines the rich and varied world of art. Major art
movements, the artists who fueled them, and the works they
created are all discussed in this series. Also covered are the
essential tools of artists as well as efforts to preserve and
restore artwork for future generations. All volumes in this
series are beautifully illustrated with full-color photographs
and diagrams. Riveting narrative, informative sidebars, fully
documented quotations, a bibliography, and thorough
index all provide excellent starting points for research
and discussion.
THOMSON
-*-
GALE
Visit Lucent Books online at

www.gale.com/lucent
or www.thomson.com
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Macfarlane, Katherine Nell.

Chapter Four . . . ..44

S ome thirty-one thousand years ago, early humans painted

6 The Jeweler’s Art

S elf-adornment is a basic human instinct. The most primitive

Jewelry Through the Ages 9

T reasures uncovered by archaeologists can tell a great deal

Dressed to Die: The Treasure of

Sumerian Jewelry Making

It was a helmet of beaten gold made to fit low over the

12 The Jeweler’s Art

The helmet as a whole was most likely hammered into, or

Queen Puabi’s Diadem

Ancient Times (to 500 b.c.) 13

Ancient Times (to 500 b.c.) 15

These “wonderful things” that Carter and Lord Carnarvon

Egyptian Jewelry Making

16 The Jeweler’s Art

A uch of the beadwork and inlay in Egyptian jewelry were made of a

indicates that they are casts,”6 according to Muller and Thiem.

Ancient Times (to 500 b.c.) 17

beads of semiprecious stone such as lapis lazuli, purple amethyst,

18 The Jeweler’s Art

Tutankhamen’s Burial Mask

20 The Jeweler’s Art

Greek and Roman Jewelry

The Romans borrowed liberally from the Greeks (and liber¬

22 The Jeweler’s Art

a core of silver or copper ... to which very fine gold leaf

The Creeks excelled

24 The Jeweler’s Art

The Greeks used repousse from the beginning. By the clas¬

The Greeks and the Romans (500 b.c. to a.d. 500) 25

Greek Enamel Work

Greek and Roman Stonework

26 The Jeweler’s Art

he Etruscans were a mysterious people—no one knows where they

28 The Jeweler’s Art

^T^he Tovsta Mohyla pectoral was discovered in the kurgan, or burial

The Emerald Necklace from

The Greeks and the Romans (500 b.c. to a.d. 500) 29

The lady’s necklace was perhaps not so grand as Empress

^T*hey found her body on the waterfront. No place for a respectable

The Greeks and the Romans (500 b.c. to a.d. 500) 31

T he taste of the early Middle Ages was characterized by a

34 The Jeweler’s Art

Theodora, with “her halo, magnificent crown, purple robe,

The Early Middle Ages (a.d. 500 to 1000) 37

A ost of what is known about Theodora comes from the historian

Earth, as Emporer Justinian, facing her across the sanctuary of