Jewellery

X

20th-Century Jewellery

About 1900, in Paris, this revival of the goldsmith's art was carried further by the jewellers of the Art Nouveau movement, notable among whom was René Lalique. Breaking free from historical styles, he based his designs on plant, bird, and insect forms. Emphasizing design rather than the costliness of material, he used enamel, ivory, glass, and horn as often as semi-precious stones and gems. The Art Nouveau style was introduced in the United States by Louis Comfort Tiffany, one of the first important American jewellery designers.

Modern jewellery reflects important changes in fashions and technology. After World War I the vogue for short hair for women resulted in the disappearance of previously popular jewelled combs and hair ornaments. In the same period jewelled vanity cases, wristwatches, and cigarette cases came into style. Strong, lightweight metals such as platinum, iridium, and palladium permit unconventional settings for gemstones, and new casting methods have resulted in more sculptural designs and a greater use of different metallic textures and finishes. As in the Renaissance, jewels are again being designed by painters and sculptors. The work of the French painter Georges Braque and the American sculptor Alexander Calder combines appropriateness with wearability. Jewellery designed by Salvador Dalí is more extravagant and more in the nature of design for its own sake than of wearable adornment. Although much modern jewellery is designed and made on an industrial scale, the tradition of the artist-craftsman is strong in Scandinavia and the United States, where silver, semi-precious stones, hammered copper, and other less costly materials are commonly used. Plastics are often used for inexpensive jewellery. Arts-and-crafts shops produce a vast selection of abstract and naturalistic designs in rings, bracelets, earrings, necklaces, and brooches. Although jewellery in the 19th and early 20th centuries was worn primarily by women, in the late 20th century some men wear such jewellery as neck chains, pendants, and bracelets.

XI

Oriental Jewellery

In the East, techniques and styles of jewellery have continued to be made in unbroken traditions stretching from remote antiquity to the present day. Indian jewellery—gold fillets and earrings, bead necklaces, and metal and pottery bangles—was produced in the Indus Valley before 1500 bc. Later sculpture shows men and women wearing heavy necklaces, bracelets, girdles, and earrings. Today Indian goldsmiths, expert in the techniques also common in the West, produce enamelled, soldered, granulated, and filigreed work of great refinement. Some of the best work, especially silver filigree, is produced in Cuttack, Kashmir, and Bengal. Fine historic examples of Indian work on display in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London include a crescent-shaped gold brooch with granulated gold balls and pendants, and gold and enamelled turban ornaments from Jaipur, Rajputana. Other examples, especially from the south of India, bear motifs from Hindu mythology depicted in relief.

Illuminated manuscripts indicate that in Persia both men and women wore rich jewellery—headgear, necklaces, and earrings. The characteristic material was enamelled gold; the main centre for this work was Shīrāz. The technique is often applied today to the making of the charms and amulets common in Iran. It is also seen in an elaborate pair of earrings (Victoria and Albert Museum) in the form of two dome-like tiers fringed with pearls and leaf-shaped pendants.

In Chinese traditional jewellery silver was used more often than gold and was gilded to prevent tarnishing. Silver and gold were frequently enamelled in blue, a favourite colour, and often decorated with blue kingfisher feathers. Jade was the most valued among precious stones. Under the Chinese Empire jewelled emblems such as the buttons on the hats of mandarins indicated rank, and extremely elaborate silver and gold filigree headdresses were worn by women of high position. Dragons, phoenixes, and many Buddhist symbols were used as decoration or charms on necklaces, rings, and bracelets. Outstanding examples of Chinese jewellery are exhibited at the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The gold and silver jewellery of Nepal, Myanmar, and Thailand is related to Indian and Chinese work and is also outstanding. The Japanese have excelled in lacquer and ivory ornaments such as combs, buttons, and purse toggles worn at the waist.

XII

Pre-Columbian Jewellery

The ready availability of gold accounts for the large amount of jewellery made in South America and Mexico before the Spanish conquest of 1532. Metalworking began in the Andes and gradually spread north to Mexico. Intricate casting techniques were used for personal and ceremonial ornaments. The themes were almost exclusively religious, with an emphasis on masks. Mosaic inlays featuring turquoise originated in Peru before ad 700 and were common in Mexican jewellery by the 14th century. A characteristic object was the pectoral, or breast ornament, often fashioned out of hammered and cast elements soldered or riveted together and enriched with cast thread decoration. A Chavín piece features a mask flanked by animal heads and pendants (Museum of the American Indian, New York). Necklaces of turquoise, shell, and other beads and earrings and earplugs were also common. The Maya of Mexico and Guatemala preferred earplugs, pendants, and bracelets of jade.

XIII

African Jewellery

Since prehistoric times the vast continent of Africa has produced jewellery of great beauty and variety. In addition to the work of the ancient Egyptians already discussed, northern Africa is noted for the silverwork, plain and enamelled, of the Tuareg and other desert peoples. South of the Sahara craftspeople in the great medieval kingdoms of Africa made rings, earrings, bracelets, and other ornaments out of gold (Ghana), amber (Songhai), ivory and brass (Benin), and bronze (Yoruba). Beads of shell and of glass have long been important elements of personal adornment all over Africa. Jewellery has also been used to express religious feelings, as in the crosses of Ethiopia and the amulets of north-west Africa, and to indicate social or economic status. Today's African jewellery echoes many traditional themes, often with modern materials.