Sep
24
16-18th Century Jewellery
September 24, 2009 |
Good jewelry of any period speaks to us in many ways. It says much of
the designer’s love of precious materials, it betrays the manufacturer’s
skills with metals, enamels and stones, it shows, very often, an attempt to
express in miniature a notion of perfection and it also says a great deal
about the person who purchased it and wore it and about the society in
wjhich he or she lived. Jewels were designed not only to be admired from
a instance, but also to be handled and the collector or enthusiast is always
limited if his knowledge is restricted to viewing pieces behind glass in a
museum or shop.
To handle a piece of jewelry is to experience its particular charm, its
own special magic, the magic that early craftsmen imbued in all their
work. Pick up a fine 17th-century pendant and turn it over. The illusion
is. not immediately shattered, but sustained through fine modelling and
engraving. There is no facade behind which the supports, struts and
scaffolding may be plainly seen. Jewels were designed to be viewed in
llie round, like a piece of sculpture.
Primitive societies recognized this mystical element in jewelry and
Jewelry
buried pieces with their dead as talismans and amulets to serve the ov ‘ner
in the afterlife. With the advent of the Christian epoch, however, this
custom was to die out and as a result we know more about the jeweliy of
classical Greece and Rome than about the medieval period.
Another major contributor to the scarcity of early examples lies wi thin
the jewels themselves. The materials used in jewelry have three major
elements in common: first, and perhaps principally, beauty; secordly,
rarity; and thirdly, durability. It is this last element, the durability ol’the
materials, which allows the continual re-working and remodellin > to
follow the vagaries of fashion and taste, that has spelt destruction fc r so
many early and fine examples of the art.
The 14th Century
The first decades of the 14th century were an age of Gothic romanticism
and love of natural beauty that was reflected in the jewelry of the t me.
The scope of the jeweller was being broadened by the increasing abund-
ance of gemstones and by the advent of pointed and table-cut diamonds
lo complement the existing cabochons. Enamelling was also an inno-
vative area, marked by the discovery of translucent enamels around 1J00.
The early application of the new enamels involved covering a flat relief
engraving in silver with a transparent film of enamel so allowing the
background to reflect in colour.
One of the great techniques of the Gothic enameller was etna I de
plique the use of translucent cloisonne enamelling on gold. The method
was practised only in the 13th and 14th centuries and may have origin ited
in Paris. Notable surviving examples are the falcons sewn on a pal otto
of brocade given by Archbishop Carandolet (1520-44) to the Cathedral
of Palermo.
The increasing use of gemstones in the 14th century led to them being
regulated by law and in 1331 a law was passed in Paris forbiddinj the
use of paste gems, while in 1355 jewellers were forbidden to use rivei and
oriental pearls together, or to use coloured foil as a backing for some
cabochon-set stones.
Finger rings were popular throughout the 13th and 14th centuries) and
unlike earlier examples they were not always based on classical des gns.
Instead, greater attention was paid to simple elegance and refined 1 nes.
Two rings of this period, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, one
a sapphire and the other a ruby ring, have such simple, clean lines that
could just as easily have been made in recent years. Cabochons were used
for rings until the late Middle Ages, while the claw setting conti med
into the Gothic period, although it began to be overtaken by the u»e of
high collets fashioned to follow the lines of the stone. The lover’s ring
originated at this time and was often inscribed with simple pro>e or
verse.
As the 14th century progressed more exotic tastes in jewelry beiame
evident at the French Court and throughout Europe jewelry had
achieved such social significance that its use was regulated by law tb the
extent that what a person could or could not wear in the way of jewelry
was determined by his social standing.
Head ornaments and belts were becoming fashionable, the fcjrmer
often reaching quite fanciful heights, while belts were studded with gold
of enamel plaques on silk or gold tissue. The number of buttons and
a Qessories on all kinds of dress was increasing and any opportunity to
wear still more jewelry was welcomed. It was during this period that
jewels began to be worn as individual ornamentation, separate from
their function as dress adornment and the jeweller towards the end of
the 14th century, though still heavily controlled and restricted by the
courts of Europe began to show a new freedom of style that eventually
b ossomed in the 15th century.
The 15th Century
The wind of revolution that blew through all the arts in Europe during
the 15th century also had a dramatic effect on jewelry. For the first time
the jeweller was able to emerge from the goldsmiths’ guilds, where he
had been confined throughout the Middle Ages to manufacturing litur-
1 objects under the patronage of the Church, or jewels commissioned
by princes or noblemen, and to develop his art alongside his colleagues qo1mc
in painting and sculpture. Indeed, the new style evident in jewelry of
this period may be partly attributable to painters and sculptors such as
Verrochio, Pollaiuolo, Brunelleschi and Botticelli, many of whom
ted their careers in the goldsmith’s workshop.
Jewelry, thus freed from the constraints of the Church, was allowed
develop freely and become a perfect expression of individual taste, a
ns of personal expression that was to prove indispensable to the
lay of prosperity of the emergent mercantile classes. Exploration
trade overseas was already adding to the materials available to the
st craftsman. This, combined with the general increase in wealth
ent throughout Europe, accounts for the extraordinary number of
Is which survive even today, testifying to the ostentation and
lendour of the time.
(Unlike painting and sculpture. Renaissance jewelry was not a redis-
covery and celebration of classical Greece and Rome, rather it borrowed
from these sister arts, especially sculpture, to develop a pictorial vocabu-
lary of its own. It is likely the general techniques of goldworking had
ived since the classical period, but there were very few pieces avail-
for study. Perhaps the only direct link with Greece and Rome was
ugh the revival of the glyptic art (the technique of carving and
igraving hardstones) with the result that many classical cameos were
copied, imitated, and incorporated into rings, brooches and pendants.
Jewellers also borrowed certain decorative motifs from the antique -
the arabesque and scrollwork that Raphael had popularized through his
decoration of the loggie at the Vatican, and the grotesques inspired by
the frescoes discovered in the ‘grottos’ of the Baths of Petrus.
The emphasis during this period was upon harmony of design and
craftsmanship rather than a display of wealth. This is not to say that
stones were unpopular, rather they were incorporated into a design for
their chromatic value and emphasized through the subtle use of coloured
enamel and elaborate settings. The most common type of cutting of this
period is the table-cut, where, as the name implies, the stone was roughly
faceted so that it displayed a flat top, though many coloured stones re-
mained en cabochon, like a pebble. Settings were generally of a square.
famidal design with the top edges lapped over to retain the stone, very
Jewelry
often with the additional ornament of imitation claws. The jewels them-
selves were nearly always pictorial in design, or at least contaijned
pictorial elements drawn from the wide range of subject matter which
the new literature had made available. These included subjects tajken
from classical mythology, romance and heroic poetry, as well as medi :val
symbolic images such as the ‘pelican in her piety’, and, of course, the
mythical unicorn.
Perhaps the most original type of jewel to be created during this period
was the hat badge or enseigne, which derives from the medieval pilgrim
sign, and was quickly adopted to display the taste and individuality of
the wearer through the choice of subject matter. Many of the conlem-
porary portraits illustrate quite clearly how the jewel was worn. The
most notable perhaps, are those by Francois Clouet, Bartolom ueo
Veneto and Holbein.
The signet ring served the same purpose as the enseigne in exhib ting
the personality and individuality of the wearer. These were often set vith
an intaglio of either contemporary or classical manufacture, or engraved
with a device, monogram or cipher to act as a seal. Other rings vere
more elaborate, often richly enamelled and with caryatid suppor s to
the high collet, or set with portrait cameos or miniatures. Diamonds
were used in the natural octahedral form so that the point of the stone
protruded from the collet, allowing the owner to use it as a scribe on
glass. Rings were also used to celebrate certain events. The most at rac-
tive are those connected with betrothals or weddings, most notably the
fecle ring where the bezel is formed by a pair of hands clasping a heart or
stone. Mourning rings were also popular, the shanks engraved with
s eletons, the bezels set with death’s heads or coffins. Contemporary
portraits indicate how liberally rings were worn, gracing every ringer,
n the thumb, and very often the first and second joints as well,
ecklaces were worn in profusion and were generally of exceptional
lejnjgth, encircling the throat several times and cascading over the bodice.
Many different types were often worn together, contributing to the
opulent effect. Chains of plaited wire had survived in popularity since
tl e Middle Ages and were augmented by more elaborate designs in-
corporating plaques and cartouches enriched with enamelled grotesques
ajid arabesques and set with various gems. Pearls strung into long ropes
a n also evident in the portraits of the time, and were often hung in
ft stoons at the middle of the bodice from a central brooch.
jbroidery - the embellishing of fabric with stitches - was already a
1-established craft in 16th-century Europe. For several centuries
professional embroiderers had been among the most respected of crafts-
men, their art linked with that of the illuminator. Most of them, at least
in England and France, were organized into powerful guilds which, by
maintaining high standards of workmanship and by protecting the
ii ffirests of the embroiderers, helped to ensure the high standing of the
craft.