Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Mastery of Design: The Dame Joan Evans Coque de Perle Necklace, 1740

The Victoria & Albert Museum



This necklace of silver is set with coque de perle (snail shells) and diamonds with a pendant and a bow. Made in England between 1740-1760 by an unknown jeweler, the necklace showed the mid-Eighteenth-Century love for the natural by its use of the snail shells which were meant as a substitution for mother-of-pearl.

Later, this piece was acquired by Dame Joan Evans whose extensive collection of jewels was bequeathed to the Victoria & Albert Museum.

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