Jewels and the woman: The romance, magic and art of feminine adornment

The Earliest Uses

There are as many guesses about the origin of adornment as about the origin of language. The most popular theories might be called the functional, the magical, and the aesthetic.

When man first felt cold, says the functional theory—or when he first felt shame and hid his shame with the fig leaf—he had to find some way of fastening his garments. The leaves, the furs, the hides, would slip off unless adequately held together, especially when the man was running in swift hunt, or the woman bending under domestic burdens. The first fastenings were probably strands of vinestalks, lashes of interlaced leaves. Then pins made of long thorns, of wood, or of the bones of animals came into use. Pins of the last sort have been found in prehistoric caves. Naturally, iron, bronze, silver and gold pins followed, as the use of these metals became known. Crude safety pins, in form essentially the same as those we use today, have been unearthed in the most ancient tombs.

The transition from bone to metal may be observed in the word fibula, the early Latin word for a clasp. For the long outer leg bone is also called the fibula, and it looks like the tongue of a clasp, for which the other bone, the tibia, is the holder. And the word fibula comes from the Latin verb fivere, meaning to fasten.

On even the earliest pins, however, and especially on the domed backs of safety pins and clasps, there are curious carvings of dots and circles and other forms, which give scope to the second theory of the origin of adornment, the magical. For along with these fasteners are found necklaces of beads and other adornments that served no practical end—except the very important purpose of placating the gods, of warding off evil.

The telling of rosary beads, widespread today in Moslem as in Catholic lands, is a milder modern aid to prayer; in primitive times the need for protection was no less frequent and more desperate. Those of us who carry a rabbit’s foot or other charm, who put an amulet in our automobile to help us drive safely, who still “knock wood” to keep away mischance, need not smile at our far-off ancestors who engraved their beads with potent symbols or wore a scarab, preferably carved of precious stone, to keep all ills away. Charms and amulets were on every neck and arm. The devils were all about; they whirled in the tempest; they sprang suddenly in the form of a wild beast; they twisted one’s ankle as a jungle vine. And every stone-age child knew that the agate protected one against thunder and against tiger bite. If the agate was ringed like an eye, especially a tiger’s eye, it could outstare and drive away the fiercest fiend. To turn away the fangs of the venomous hidden snake, what better charm than lapis lazuli? Thus each of the colored stones known to the ancients had its special powers, or could be carved with symbols and signs of might—and jewels were worn to ward off all misfortune. Even among the ancient Greeks, it was recognized that (as the slave in Aristophanes’ play Plutus observes) there is no amulet that can save one from “the bite of a sycophant.”

The third theory of the origin of adornment, the aesthetic, declares that man is born with a love of beauty. There is no question—and if there were, modern research has answered it—that the bright trinket attracts the babe. When one is happy one wants to sing; when one sees beauty, one wants to experience it with the gift of sight or, if it is tangible, to put it on. And ever to increase earth’s store of beauty. We cannot snare a sunrise, but we can make a garland of spring flowers. Even before he fashioned beads, primitive man adorned himself with necklaces of shells, of bears’ claws, stags’ teeth—probably also of many colored berries, but these have crumbled in the caves. Such findings are so widespread that Carlyle declared: “The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is decoration.”

Since the question of origins is buried in surmise, it seems fair to follow that eminent advocate of the middle way, Sir Roger de Coverley, and allow that there is something to be said for all three theories. Each impulse, to hold up clothing, to ward off evil, to enjoy beauty—power, protection, pleasure—may have had a share in the birth of adornment. It is true that there are paintings and statues, in the early tombs, of women clad only in their jewels. But while queens, and the concubines of kings might be thus untrammeled in their quest of beauty, humbler folk at work needed workaday attire. And always the magicians, the medicine men, then the priests, wove their holy spells, with mitre and chalice and ring inscribed with the secret words of power. A monarch of early times was an impressive sight, as not only his rings, his armlets and neckpiece, but his breastplate, the buckle of his belt, and the hilt of his sword were carved with sacred symbols and crusted with precious stones. Here were protection, power, and grandeur intertwined.

Perhaps the earliest jewelry to which we can attach an owner’s name was in the find unearthed in 1901 by Flinders Petrie in the royal tombs at Abydos. It is a bracelet of golden hawks, rising from alternate blocks of turquoise and gold, and it belonged to the Egyptian Queen of Zer back in 5400 B.C. Somewhat later lived the Princess Knumit, whose mummy was adorned with all manner of jewels, anklets, bracelets, armlets, headbands, including a serpent necklace of beads of gold, silver, carnelian, lapis lazuli, and emerald, and hieroglyphics wrought in gold with inlaid gems. From Chaldea, as early as 3000 B.C., we have beads, and jewelry of lapis lazuli, and headdresses of finely beaten gold.

Egypt and the Near East

A panel in one of the pyramids gives us a realistic picture of the interior of a jeweler’s shop of long ago. The master craftsman, his bookkeeper, his workers and his apprentices are all busy at their tasks. We see them selecting, cutting, grinding, firing, shaping, setting, polishing, with tools that have changed little in 3000 years. The jewels we know today are all present there: diadems, earrings, brooches, bracelets, rings, girdles, anklets. The necklace seems to have been, in most cases, a wide tight band, almost a collar; on many a mummy such a “choker” has been preserved, studded with jewels, the gold between often in the shape of a falcon, or a lotus, or a sphinx. Favorite among the designs, of course, was the scarab; in the mummy itself, a scarab was inserted to take the place of the heart.

Two ornaments common in ancient Egypt are not found in use today. One is the pectoral, a great bejeweled breastpiece, usually hung from the neck. The other is the golden wig cover. The great men and women of the eighteenth century B.C. wore long black wigs (in contrast to the great men of the eighteenth century A.D.; George Washington’s inaugural wig, was, of course, powdered white). Close-fitting over these black wigs were joined rows of gold bands or medallions, beaten fine, fastened together, forming a complete cover that reached to the shoulders. The bands bore hieroglyphics, the medallions were usually shaped like heads of man or beast. One other difference from later times: for the snuffbox of the eighteenth century A.D., or the cigarette lighter of the twentieth, society folk in ancient Egypt carried a perfume box.

The Egyptians had many rings, including signet rings. These were intaglios; that is, the design was cut into, hollowed out of, the metal or stone, so that when the ring was pressed on clay or wax it would leave a raised design like a cameo. The design might be a god, or a sacred animal such as a scarab or a sphinx, usually with an indication of the identity of the owner. Thus the King’s seal, and especially the King’s signet ring if borne by a messenger, carried the royal authority. Jezebel, wife of Ahab, King of the Israelites, used the seal of her royal spouse on the letters she wrote to destroy Naboth, whose vineyard they coveted.

The Israelites, indeed, wore rings on their fingers, in their nostrils, in their ears, and we are told that when they walked there was a tinkling about their feet. They also wore a gem pressed into the soft side of the nostril, a favorite spot for display through the Near East, still adorned by a gem among the Bedouins and the Hindus of today. The Israelites gave of these jewels in great quantity to adorn the Tabernacle that was built in the wilderness—and also for the making of the Golden Calf.

Legend has it that Solomon’s wisdom emanated from a magic ring. One day he carelessly left this ring behind him at the bath, and with the water of his bath it was thrown into the sea. Solomon retained enough wisdom to suspend his legal court for forty days, after which the ring came back to him in the stomach of a fish served at his table. A similar story of a jewel returned in the belly of a fish is told by Polycrates, tyrant of Samos in 530 B.C. Like stories occur in The Thousand and One Nights; and the coat of arms of the city of Glasgow contains a salmon with a ring in its mouth, memorializing the occasion when St. Kentigern from the fish’s mouth restored to an early queen her ring and her reputation.

Oriental tales have many accounts of magic rings. One of the most elaborate deals with Gyges, a Lydian noble to whom King Candaules, proud of the possession of a beautiful wife, displayed her in her undraped beauty. The resourceful Gyges descended into a chasm of the earth, where he found a brazen horse with a human carcass in its belly. From the body Gyges took a ring which, when he turned the stone inward, made him invisible. Thus fortified, Gyges entered the palace and murdered the king. The widow, Nyssia, married him; he reigned thirty-eight years, from 716 to 678 B.C., with the help of the ring becoming so powerful and so rich that men spoke proverbially of “the wealth of Gyges.”

Another ring, as remembered by Chaucer in The Squire’s Tale, gave a man the power to understand the language of the birds. The reader may remember that the messenger between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba was a bird that whispered in their ears. We gather such stories from early days literally through a fabulous thousand and one nights.

Although jewelry was a preeminent concern of the Egyptians, because they must be adorned not only in this world but in the next, it was a lively preoccupation throughout the Near East, the cradle of civilization. Babylonian and Assyrian tombs yield treasures in splendidly mounted jewels. A description of the goddess Ishtar, descending through the Seven Gates to the ultimate world, pictures her at each gate putting aside a separate jewel, finger rings, toe rings, necklace, earrings, armlet, brooch, girdle: she passes through the final gate in unadorned beauty.

Among the jewels of ancient Persia, from the fourth century B.C., is a great necklace of three rows of pearls, almost 500 pearls in all, half of them still well preserved across the flight of twenty-five centuries.

Westward to the Greeks

There exist some examples of Greek art in early times. A gold and silver brooch in the form of a flower may have been shaped about 1400 B.C. Perhaps 500 years later, by the time of the Trojan War, there were inlays, intaglios, even small plaques of gold with hooks to fit the ear. In the fifth century, when the great dramatists filled the theatres, Greek lapidaries were making filigree and enamels of fruit and flowers—a bit later, of the fair feminine form. By this time, too, the Greeks were copying the designs they saw on, or bought from, Egyptian and Phoenician traders; the sphinx and the scarab appear in Hellenic workmanship.

Originators are held by their new problems to a sort of modesty in design. Imitators often—striving to outdo—overdo. The Greeks grew far more elaborate than their predecessors. The great Greek sculptors were delighted with the human figure which posed sufficient problems, either bare or simply draped. But outside of statuary, and after the great fifth and fourth centuries, the wealthy Greeks in their ways of life had caught the fever of display. Their jewelry must surpass that of the eastern barbarians to whom they were bringing the benefits of Greek culture. From every medallion of a necklace, for example, might hang a pendant. And this pendant might be a tiny golden vase, which contained perfume—each vase a different fragrance—or which might open to reveal a series of figures—as, later, baroque rosary beads opened to reveal, in minute carving, episodes in the life of the Virgin Mary.

A portrait of Alexander the Great was a favorite figure, in many materials and forms. Although Alexander gave one artist exclusive right to reproduce his likeness after his death, as this monopoly lapsed there was a boom on “good luck” jeweled representations of the man who wept because there were no more worlds for him to conquer.

The Greeks did not ape all the antics of the Phoenicians, some of whose high-born ladies pierced the entire rim of their ears, as well as the lobe, each jewel in its eyelet supporting a pendant stone. The Greeks used but one ornament per ear; but these grew larger and larger, more and more weighted with metal and studded with jewels, and so were finally worn suspended from a diadem or a cloth band.

Alexander’s conquests having taken the Greeks into farther lands and introduced them to unsuspected splendors of the Orient, they carried home gems that before had been unfamiliar to them: the topaz, the amethyst, the aquamarine.

Etruscan Achievements

In Italy, meanwhile, the Etruscans had brought the work of the goldsmith and the lapidary to a high peak of artistry. They developed the swivel ring, in which the mounted gem or special charm might be turned about, so that any face of it could be displayed. Thus the carvings on the belly of a scarab became as important as the design on its back.

The Etruscans also made circular or oval bands of earrings and necklaces, within which a pendant might hang free, a gently swinging precious stone or golden charm. From their necklaces often hung a hollow pendant, in which an amulet might be placed. They made many headpieces, bands, wreaths, and pins of beaten or granulated gold.

Especially deft was the work of the Etruscans in granulated gold. Onto a metal surface they soldered tiny specks of gold, almost as fine as powder, producing the effect of a rich grain. The artistry of the Etruscan work was so superb that when it was recovered during the Renaissance, Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), the greatest goldsmith of his time, despaired of making successful copies of the Etruscan pieces and decided to shape designs of his own devising, “inferior as they may be.”

The Roman Conquest

The whole Etruscan civilization gave way before the splendor that was Rome. Home from their conquests the Romans brought great stores of jewels, treasures of the Orient. Before the crowding and gaping throngs of the imperial city, the “triumphs” of their rulers marched for hours through the streets of Rome, while foreign potentates pulled chariots bearing their conquerors and carts with the loot of their palaces. At Pompey’s third triumph, in addition to countless gold and silver cases bestudded with gems, there were three dining-couches adorned with pearls, and a great chessboard, three feet by four, wrought of two precious stones, with a golden moon, weighing thirty pounds.

The Romans also brought home artisans, metal workers and jewelers, from whom after a time the natives learned their craft. Again we find the victors trying to outdo the vanquished whom they naturally despised. The adornments of men and women grew more and more massive. Women’s hairpins were eight and ten inches long. Rings were worn upon every finger. Great thumb rings were set with jewels or made of gold in various designs, especially the heads of animals. Some of the bands of gold were very large but hollow; down the ages echo complaints that, in accident or brawl, a golden ring was crushed. The wealthy, of course, insisted on rings of solid gold. These became so heavy that some had to be worn in cold weather only, lighter ones being designed for summer wear. A specialty among the patricians came to be the key ring, a golden band with the key devised to lie flat along the finger, thus keeping with the master the safety of his treasures. Often a large iron key ring was worn by the chief steward of an estate; this opened the strongbox, which might hold the dinner plate and other daily valuables, and within a recess of which nestled the treasure chest of the golden key.

So great was the jeweled extravagance of the late Republic that Cato the Censor (234-149 B.C.) sought by legislation to limit the amount of jewelry one might wear. He also restricted the use of metal in rings, assigning iron, silver, or gold according to rank. Gold was reserved for the official ring of the Senator, which he himself might wear only when on duty. Naturally such restrictions could not be binding for long. Censorship usually produces an exaggeration of what it has tried to curb. In the early days of the Empire everyone worth his salt manifested his worth with adornments.

The citizens favored bright colors in their jewels: reds, yellows, blues. The drivers at the chariot races wore different colors; spectators bet on the red, the yellow, or the blue, and many a precious stone changed hands according to the speed of the horses and the drivers’ skill. If a lapidary could not secure precious stones large enough, or in quantities to meet the ever increasing demand, he made imitations of colored glass. Although Pliny cried out against the practice of making false gems, the usual purchaser had few tests to show when he was cheated.

The Vogue of the Pearl

The notorious pearl-drinking dare of Cleopatra caught the fancy of the Romans. The serpent of the Nile dissolved a union (the Roman word for pearl was unionem, in this case truly symbolic) worth half a million dollars, and drank it as a pledge to her Antony. Cleopatra killed herself rather than walk in the triumph of Emperor Augustus, but the Emperor’s favorite, Agrippa, we are told, secured the mate to Cleopatra’s pearl. She had this great pearl halved, for the ears of the statue of Venus in the Pantheon.

The vogue of the pearl swept over Rome. This “disease of the oyster,” with its blush of rainbow colors over white, with its tint of beauty and its hint of underwater mystery, had indeed always been regarded as the queen of jewels. The Romans affected it to the degree of vulgar display. The historian Pliny (23-79 A.D.), who railed upon many customs of the time, commented on Pompey’s having a portrait of himself made in pearls and borne by slaves in his triumph. “Unworthy!” cried the satirist, “and a presage of the anger of the gods.” Pliny also recorded that a young bride was “covered from head to foot with pearls and emeralds.” He waxed indignant at the fact that women had pearls set in their shoes. But so did the Emperor Caligula, while the Emperor Nero, fond of the theatre, had pearls adorn his favorite players’ masks.

Not to be outdone by an Egyptian, Clodius—whose father was a favorite tragic actor—invited a great company to a feast; he dissolved and drank a large pearl, said that he enjoyed the flavor, and fed a similar gem to every guest.

Roman Luxury

The vogue of the pearl did not bring about the neglect of other gems. The Senator Nonius owned a great opal, valued at two million sesterces, approximately $150,000. The Emperor Augustus coveted the stone; rather than yield it to him, Nonius withdrew into exile.

Lollia Paulina, wife of the Emperor Caligula, possessed a great chain of emeralds and pearls worth over two million dollars.

It is significant of the change in Roman ways that when the Emperor Tiberius once more tried to limit the wearing of gold rings, he based his restrictions not on rank but on riches. Only those citizens might wear rings of gold, he ordained in 22 A.D., whose fathers and grandfathers held property valued at 400,000 sesterces, $30,000. Jewels, always the property, were thus also made the prerogative of the hereditary rich.

The Tide Turns East

Back from Rome toward the East, with Constantine in 330 A.D., went the flowering fashions, to riot in Byzantine luxury. The Eastern capital exceeded the declining city of the West—abandoned to the barbarians and the popes—in extravagance, in colorful splendor and elaborate intricacy of design. Gems, no longer reserved for the showy jewels, were sewn upon or woven into the very texture of garments. In all this profusion, the crafts of the goldsmith and the lapidary continued to thrive, while the West lapsed into the dun rigor of the Dark Ages.

Eastward to India

More or less independently of the western world, the making of fine jewels flourished in the Far East. In India the code of Manu, about 250 B.C., prescribed fines for poor workmanship and for the debasing of gold. A drama of the same period describes a workshop, with pearls and emeralds, and artisans to grind lapis lazuli, to cut shells, to pierce coral, and to make the filigree and other ornaments that have persisted in that part of the world unchanged to our day.

The lavishness of Oriental potentates is proverbial; their collections of precious stones and elaborate jewels have been as fabulous as their incalculable wealth. Almost to our own generation birthday gifts to maharajahs have matched the monarch’s weight in gold or precious stones. At the greatest period of Indian art, during the reign of the Mogul Shah Jehan, who died in 1666, the art of jewelry almost merged with that of architecture. In addition to the celebrated Peacock Throne, the Shah built the Great Mosque at Delhi, and at Agra the Pearl Mosque and that triumph of beauty, the Taj Mahal. This was erected as a mausoleum for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahall, who was called “the adornment of the palace.”

In addition to the designs and patterns of tile that are a feature of the mosques, the Taj Mahal is adorned with great treasures of the East: “jasper from the Punjab, carnelians from Broach, turquoises from Tibet, agates from Yemen, lapis lazuli from Ceylon, coral from Arabia, garnets from Bundelcund, diamonds from Punnah, rock crystal from Malwar, onyx from Persia, chalcedony from Asia Minor, sapphires from Colombo.” It took thirteen years, from 1632 to 1645, to collect these treasures and construct the mausoleum. The memory of a woman may be buried there, but a beauty beyond description is preserved.

Over the Chinese Wall

Still farther east, in China, a more restrained and delicate beauty was developed. Piety and filial devotion taught the Chinese to limit their display. They cultivated the economy of good taste. The world’s largest known emerald, found in China, was carved into the figure of Kwan Yin, goddess of mercy. Jewels were not worn indiscriminately; they served not only to adorn but to signify station. A mandarin of the first rank wore ruby or red tourmaline; a mandarin of the second, coral or garnet; of the third, beryl or lapis lazuli; of the fourth, rock crystal; and of the fifth, other stones of white.

Beyond all other stones the Chinese prized “the divine stone,” jade. While this occurs in various shades, even of blue, of red, of brown, it was, and still is, especially sought in ivory white and in the shades of green, from light apple to the dark “imperial jade.” This was, legend whispered, a crystallization of the spirit of the sea. Its possession conferred longevity, man’s prolonged moment in the eternity of the gods.

A perfect piece of jade is left uncarved. As a pendant, brooch, or ring, it stands alone, in simple beauty. A cultured Chinese was likely to have one with him unmounted, just the stone, to cherish it and finger it and feel its silken surface. There were experts who could tell the quality, the very color, of a piece of jade, without looking at it, just from the feel.

Treasured through the centuries in China, jade has come to be prized in the West as well. The Emperor Kuang-hou sent Queen Victoria, for her Jubilee, a sceptre of jade. The deep green of the richest jade, the divine stone, makes it a fit companion for the diamond, the monarch of gems.

Dark Age of the Diamond

The diamond was not mentioned, in this summary narrative, until the description of the Taj Mahal. This greatest of precious stones—hardest of gems, and the only one that consists of a single element—was little known in the ancient world, and but slowly won appreciation in the West. At the height of the Renaissance, Cellini in 1568 set down the values of the precious stones, of flawless stones one carat in weight. A ruby of such specifications was worth 800 gold crowns; an emerald, 400; a diamond, but 100. (The more common sapphire was a far fourth, at ten gold crowns a carat.)

The Dark Ages in southern Europe were not especially bright with gems. Individual rulers made some display, on crown, on hilt of sword, and ecclesiastical splendor was slowly gathering, along with decorated frames and representations of the Virgin Mary. On the other hand, the medieval Church frowned upon unseemly extravagance of display, and some monarchs, even Charlemagne when he doffed his rich crown of state, were sober and plain in their attire.

Tribes to the North

In the more northerly lands, and among the tribes that in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries pressed upon and twice overran Rome, there was meanwhile more than a crude attempt at jeweled adornment. The Ostrogoths made some magnificent brooches, mainly with animal designs. The Visigoths were fond of garnets, often set on a background of cloisonné. Their crowns and coronets were elaborately wrought; one of these, belonging to the Spanish-Gothic King Reccesvinthus (649-672) was given as a votive offering to the church of Santa Maria near Toledo.

The warlike and otherwise austere Franks took pride in their jeweled buckles. Their brooches were circular, or formed in the shape of birds. In Belgium, in the Fifth century, there was considerable carving of chips, a practice that migrated to Scandinavia. In Sweden there was also an abundance of circular pendants, beaten of thin gold, and decorated with animals.

The Celts and the Emerald Isle

Among the Celtic peoples were found armlets and fibulas, the latter not so short in the arch, nor so exquisite, as the Greek pins, nor yet so long and heavy as the Roman. The Celts had large, crescent-shaped head ornaments, attached near the ears and standing straight up on either side like the horned moon. They made heavy gold torques, necklaces of twisted metal usually tight as a collar. Some of the torques, especially those in Ireland, were much longer and hung down in massive twists across the chest. Ireland is called “the Emerald Isle” not from any pride in its deep green verdure, but from the ring sent by Pope Adrian to Henry II of England in 1170, a ring set with an emerald, for the King’s investiture with the dominion of Ireland.

The Scotch, because of the way they wore their plaid, grew to have exceptionally splendid brooches. A fine one of these, preserved in the British Museum, is known as the Loch Buy brooch; it is of rock crystal cut in a convex mound, in a circle of ten projecting turrets each topped with a pearl. A noteworthy brooch design is that of the pin with arms: a straight bar down the center, enclosed in two arcs of a circle of beaten gold.

Although most of their gold designs were hammered down into the metal, the early Celts also grew expert in répoussé, a process in which, on a thin sheet of metal, the design is hammered upward from underneath.

The Anglo-Saxons

Among the Anglo-Saxons, especially those that settled in Kent, a greater variety was manifest. They made beads in many shapes and shades of glass and amber. They were fond of the amethyst set in pure gold. They adorned their hair with pins tipped with figures of animals and fantastic birds. They took great pains with the art of enamel, which they fashioned cloisonné.

Jewels in English History

The finest known piece of Anglo-Saxon days is the Alfred Jewel, a gold plaque of cloisonné enamel found in 1693 at Newton Park. It is an oval two inches long, a little over an inch high, and an inch deep. At the tip of the oval is a boar’s head. Rock crystal covers the main plaque of translucent enamel, blue, white, green, and brown, shaped in the head of a man. Some think this may represent a saint, or the Christ; some say it is a portrait of Alfred the Great, for along the edge in gold are the letters: Aelfred mec heht gewyrcan, “Alfred had me worked.”

Among other treasures of early England are examples of filigree, such as a Kentish brooch set with garnets, of the sixth century, and brooches of granular gold.

Edward the Confessor’s Jewels

One of the three Royal Crowns of the British monarch is supposedly that of Edward the Confessor, who was buried in Westminster in 1101, but whose shrine was opened and the jewels taken forth for future kings. The royal treasures of the English realm, however, were broken up by the Roundheads under Cromwell.

Life at its longest is fleeting, but beauty is an enduring symbol: the destroyers of the royal treasure are scorned today almost more than the regicides. The current Crown of Edward the Confessor, therefore, is a replica, even if the old one was authentic. Less suspect is the great sapphire, which Edward wore in his coronation ring, and which today is the central stone in the cross atop the British Imperial Crown of State.

Growth of the Goldsmiths’ Guild

Less than a century after Edward, in the reign of Henry II, the first Plantagenet ruler of England, the Goldsmiths’ Guild was formed. By 1380, two hundred years later, it was one of the most powerful guilds in the country, with rigid rules for admittance and for the quality of materials and workmanship. Although the artists worked for the king and the nobles, the bulk of their production was for ecclesiastical and general religious use. As a result, they developed greater refinements and further elaborations in this field. We have already noticed the rosary beads that open, disclosing scenes of the life of Christ or the Virgin Mary. But a cardinal without succumbing to the sin of pride might wear a jeweled pendant if the hanging box of gold opened upon a crucifix, or adorn his robe with a rich chain of gold if its links were medallions designed with holy scenes. Cardinal Wolsey, whose kitchen boasted twenty-two specialty chefs, vied with his lusty monarch, Henry VIII, in many ways, but he could never hope to match the King’s jewels which included almost 250 rings, well over 300 brooches, and one of whose diamonds, an observer reports, was bigger than “the largest walnut I ever saw.”

The Italians in the Renaissance

The Italian Renaissance started earlier than and outshone the English. The great jewel collections of ancient times, of the Emperors Julius Caesar and Hadrian of Maecenas were dwarfed by the collections of the Medici and the Borgias. The styles favored in those days are still vivid in the portraits of the period. Many of the painters and sculptors, indeed—Donatello (1386-1466), Pollaiuolo (1429-1498), Botticelli (1444-1510), Cellini, to name but four—began their careers as goldsmiths and jewelers. They fashioned works with painstaking devotion and venturesome skill for their generous but exacting patrons.

Lorenzo de Medici collected the antique cameos and intaglios freshly unearthed in Italian soil; under the spur of his interest, intaglio jewels achieved a new delicacy. Metal was worked with greater deftness, flat, chased, or répoussé. Faience, the art of painting and glazing ceramics, was added to the colorful arts of enameling.

Enseignes became popular, badges of dignity in the form of a gold adornment on a man’s hat, with the nobleman’s crest or other identification caught into the design. All over the continent, and even among the Italianate Englishmen of Elizabeth’s court and James’, the enseigne was worn as a clasp to hold the plume, while from one ear beneath dangled a golden ring or a pear-shaped pearl.

Rings of all sorts were again in demand, especially signet rings, fede (clasped hands) friendship rings, gimmals or gemmels (twin rings that could be separated for two lovers to wear)—and poison rings.

Particularly popular was the pendant, in many forms and positions. Pendant earrings again grew, until almost too large to wear. Even larger pendants, many opening on cameos, dangled upon the breast. Pendants of all sorts hung from the girdles, utilitarian in the shape of golden keys or scissors, religious in the shape of a crucifix or the relic of a saint, along with purely aesthetic medallions of animals or flowers, or golden spheres—so many as to make a tinkling when one walked.

A new fashion in the pendant was introduced, a jewel on the forehead, hung from a hair band or adornment; in India, similar pendants had for centuries hung from the veil. This new pendant was called the ferronière, from La Ferrionière (“the ironmonger’s wife”) whose portrait survives, probably painted by Leonardo da Vinci when she was mistress of Francis I of France.

The Renaissance Across Europe

When Cellini went to France, he gave impetus to the art work there. In Spain, the goldsmiths fashioned reliquaries; they wrought pendants on which they hung the emeralds new-garnered from Peru; they favored bow-shaped brooches of many jewels, the ruby vying with the emerald. The great international bankers, the Fuggers, dealt also in jewels and gems. Hans Holbein the painter, while in England, made many designs for jewels. The painter Albrecht Dürer, son of a goldsmith, fashioned a pendant for Henry VIII, with the initials E R (Enricus Rex) and three large drops.

At the same time, the sons of wealthy merchants, the young bloods of the cities, with spangled chain and jeweled dagger hilt, aped the sons of nobles. Restrictive regulations did little to curb their display. As wealth was not yet evenly distributed, not everyone could afford the genuine precious stones, and the trade in paste flourished. Milan was the center of this manufacture. In addition to the ordinary glass used for imitation gems, strass glass was developed. Invented by Josef Strasser, this mixes lead or flint with the usual vitreous substance and obtains a greater lustre. Either type of glass often had placed beneath it, cunningly hidden in the setting, a tiny bit of quicksilver or tinfoil, to make the glass reflect more light and thus seem to sparkle with its own fire.

The Renaissance no more than earlier times had skill to know the genuine from the imitation. Cellini chuckles over the fact that Henry VIII of England, bargaining with a shrewd dealer of Milan for a fine set of jewels, received what he felt was one of his best buys—in paste.

The Reformation

The ease of working in these various modes overreached itself. The designs again grew more and more elaborate. Enseignes, medallions, love tokens, memorials of saints, grew heavier than the hats, than the heads, they were intended to adorn. Rings and bracelets were fashioned to be worn outside of gloves; gloves were fashioned with slits to display bracelets and rings within. Extravagance of ornament, though a minor cause, contributed to the revulsion against the many abuses of the day that led to the two reformations. The Church itself embarked on a housecleaning campaign, which included simplicity of dress and paucity of adornment.

The seventeenth century in Europe, in the field of jewels, was one of timid venturing. The Portuguese came to the fore with delicate work, golden sprays of leaves and flowers with tiny gems, ribbons and knots of gold. In France the sévigné appeared, a simple golden bow or rosette worn on the breast, named after the Marquise de Sévigné, a noted blue-stocking and one of the greatest letter writers of her day. The sévigné, at first rather plain, was elaborated during the eighteenth century into a massive brooch, or even a gemmed stomacher. The aigrette also appeared at this time, in the form of feather-like thin movable stalks of gold tipped with tiny gems set in enamel; these vibrated as the wearer moved.

The Eighteenth Century

In the eighteenth century greater attention was again paid to adornment. The aigrette became more popular, used mainly as an ornament for the hair. Thin silver stalks like stems of wheat were banded just below the center, with a slide for fastening; the tips were set with diamonds. Some pins for the hair and some brooches were fashioned with birds or butterflies, again on thin stalks so that they flitted as the wearer walked. This vibration of the aigrette added to the sparkle of the gems. I have made a variation of this jewel, as a flower, to fit the taste of the twentieth century.

A new type of pendant earring was the girandole. This appeared in two main forms. In one, from a large circular stone at the ear lobe hung three pear-shaped pendants, sometimes amethysts or other colored stones, but usually diamonds. In the other type, from the top stone was suspended an oval hoop of gold, within which a single large diamond hung loose.

More and more as the nineteenth century came near, the fashion in precious stones demanded diamonds. If not in the center of a jewel, they were used to set off the main one. They were worn in the new marquise ring, the gold of which was fashioned to hold a large oblong stone surrounded by diamonds. They were an essential element of the parure, the set of matching jewels, which developed in this century in France. Thus milady might have, in a parure, a bracelet, necklace, earrings, aigrette, and sévigné, all ordered together and made of the same metals and precious stones, patterned for their respective purposes in a concordant, harmonizing whole.

On the Romantics

For a time, under the influence of the rococo style, and the Gothic tendency in the other arts, it looked as though jewelry designs, becoming more and more elaborate and extravagant, might again approach the eccentric and achieve the inept. In 1755, however, the ruins of Pompeii were unearthed, with their treasures of antique style, and a classical simplicity became the order of the day, fostered for a time by the “return to nature” of the Romantics. It was felt, for instance, that the diamond, now prized beyond all other precious stones, shone most effulgent when it stood alone in a simple setting.

The wars toward the end of the eighteenth century, culminating in the French Revolution and the campaigns of Napoleon, shifted the ownership but did not stem the manufacture or the collection of jewels. The inventory of Mlle. Mars, taken in 1828, listed over sixty items, many of them treasures in themselves. Notable among these were: a necklace of two rows of brilliants (diamonds), forty-six in the first row, forty-eight in the second. Eight bunches of sprigs of wheat tipped with brilliants (that is, eight aigrettes) totaling about 500 brilliants weighing 57 carats; a garland of brilliants that could be worn as one bouquet or divided into three flower brooches, totaling 709 brilliants and 85¾ carats; a sévigné—mounted in colored gold a central large topaz was surrounded by brilliants, with three drops of opals also surrounded by brilliants, the whole set in gold studded with rubies and pearls; a pair of girandole earrings of brilliants—in each, from the large stud brilliant were suspended three pear-shaped brilliants, united by four smaller ones; a pair of earrings—from the large stud brilliant of each hung a cluster of 14 smaller brilliants, like a bunch of grapes; a parure of opals, consisting of a necklace, a sévigné, two bracelets, earrings, and a belt-plate. And Mlle. Mars, though a noted comic actress and a favorite of Napoleon, was by no means the outstanding society woman of her day.

Into the Nineteenth Century

By 1840 many new designs—frets, crescents, stars—were employed to show off the popular diamonds. These were still preeminent in the magnificence of the marriage of Napoleon III in 1853, but his Empress Eugénie revived the use of strings of pearls for the evening. Diamonds were then worn in similar strings, called rivières, necklaces of a succession of single stones, matched or graduated, with a very large stone in the center. A stone of ten carats was no longer considered large; the diamond must be at least fifteen carats, and preferably nearer forty. The large solitaire became popular, not only for engagement rings, but as the clip-stone on a pin or pendant, from the diamond often hanging a pear-shaped pearl.

The late nineteenth century developed an electicism, a freedom of choice among the various modes of the past, that continues into the jewelry design of our own day. Toward the end of the century, perhaps as a by-product of the school of les diaboliques in literature and art, there developed a desire to shock the bourgeoisie, and with it a certain desire for novelty, manifested in such bizarre items as live beetles worn as pins, or brooches of a live tortoise with gems set in its shell.

The Twentieth Century

A central ground of common sense and classical design was firmly maintained by Peter Carl Fabergé and the House of Fabergé, which designed many of the jewels at the turn of the century and continued popular among the Edwardians. The great World’s Fair in Paris in 1900 showed a fresh interest in design, and the use of such materials as translucent enamel, ivory, and horn. The influence of the Orient showed in these materials; it was also evident in larger and more colorful earrings and the multiplicity of bracelets.

Hair styles played their part in the shaping of jewelry. The pompadour in front, with chignon, increased the output of tortoise-shell combs, often studded with diamonds, and of fourches, large two-pronged hairpins similarly adorned. After 1914, the vogue of bobbed hair shifted production from combs to diamond slides. At the same time, the exposed ears made ear ornaments de rigueur. As many persons objected to having their ear lobes pierced for earrings, the earclip became popular; today it is almost universal in feminine fashion.

About this time, too, short sleeves led to an increased use of bracelets, often worn several on one arm. Especially popular has been the bangle bracelet, a band of gold from which are suspended coins, figures of men and animals, and other tokens and mementos. Sometimes golden disks are engraved with sentimental designs or sayings; sometimes the words are humorous, the figures grotesque.

Platinum and more recently palladium have been increasingly used as basic metals for the new jewelry, along with the now less frequent silver and the constant gold.

Spurred by René Lalique, the impetus of modern art has been felt in jewelry design. Cubic, non-representational, and other modes of abstract form have helped shape the modern bracelet, earclip, watch, and the case for powder, cigarettes, lighter, or the watch. While some jewels thus manifest the modern modes, others draw freely on the beauty of the past, as stimulus to the creation of fresh patterns of beauty for our day.