After a Fashion: An Enamel and Diamond Necklace 1660-1900

Enamel and Diamond Bow Necklace
with Pearls and a Large Sapphire Drop
1660-1900
Western Europe
The Victoria & Albert Museum

This necklace was over two hundred years in the making. The centerpiece of the gorgeous work is a bow of turquoise, opaque enamel, set with diamonds. This was made in Western Europe around 1660 and was acquired by Lady Alma-Tameda. This enamel and diamond brooch was adapted into a necklace in 1800. The chain consists of alternating enamel bows of white, black and blue, backed in yellow gold. Near 1900, the pearl and large sapphire drop was added to the central bow along with two mounted enamel pieces in a floral design.


The floral pieces, as well as the necklace as a whole, insist on maintaining an organic feel. Therefore, the sapphire drop mimics the natural shape of the Baroque pearls and the diamonds—even the later additions—are table-cut so as to rely on their own inherent sparkle as opposed to overworked faceting.

Gifts of Grandeur: The Balmoral Brooch, 1895

Commemorative Brooch
Collingwood & Co., 1895
The Victoria & Albert Museum

Still in its original presentation box, this commemorative brooch was given to the actress Winifred Dolan (1867-1958) by Queen Victoria following Dolan’s special command performance of R. C. Carton's play “Liberty Hall.” The play was performed at Balmoral Castle on September 16, 1895. In the play, Miss Dolan played the role of “Miss Hickson.” The brooch was made by Collingwood & Co. especially for the Queen. Collingwood created several such commemorative pieces which Queen Victoria gifted to visitors or special guests.

As was the style of the time, the jewel is designed as bar brooch featuring the arms of the Royal Victorian Order, enameled in red on a gold base with six imitation pearls. The presentation box of green leather is trimmed with gold and lined in beige satin and velvet. 

Mastery of Design: A Gold and Baroque Pearl Bracelet, 1968

Bracelet
John Donald, 1968
Gold and Baroque Pearls
The Victoria & Albert Museum

When Princess Margaret wasn’t drinking or making people cry, she liked to shop for clothes and jewels. She had her favorite designers. Among her favorite jewelers was John Donald whom we’ve discussed previously regarding his Honeycomb Pendant. 

Donald John liked to play with natural shapes and create cutting-edge designs which were reminiscent of themes from everyday life. This bracelet of gold takes the form of a bird’s nest, set with baroque pearls of varying shades.

While this example from the V&A wasn’t made for Margaret Rose, she did have several bracelets by Donald and was a frequent visitor to his shop.

Mastery of Design: The Castellani Diadem, 1860

Diadem
Castellani, c. 1860
The Victoria & Albert Museum

The Italian jewelry firm of Castellani made this diadem around 1860 based on an Etruscan original which dated to about 300 B.C. The original is the Campana Collection in the Louvre.

This tiara was copied four more times with each of the copies remaining in private collections. This one was shown at the International Exhibition in London in 1862. There, the works of Castellani garnered much attention and acclaim. So many flocked to the Castellani exhibit, in fact, that a policeman was stationed outside of the display to control the crowds. Certainly, the diadem was the centerpiece of the group.

The piece is made of gold with open floral-work. It is set with pearls, and beads and features enameled, serrated leaves and beaded blue berries. 

Mastery of Design: The Salamanca Pendant, 1800-1870

Pendant
Salamanca Spain
1800-1870
The Victoria & Albert Museum

It’s not surprising, given Spain’s highly-Catholic history, that Roman Catholic imagery would be incorporated into all art forms. Many jewels made in Spain from the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries featured religious themes along with more secular designs.

This cross-shaped pendant is a good example. Made in the Salamanca region of Spain, the pendant is a great representation of the sort of filigree work which made the region famous. While the piece is dominated by the cross, it is suspended from a tulip, and this from a filigree bow—a popular fashion of the early-to-mid Nineteenth Century. Similarly, as was the style of the time, the pendant is made in three sections—each encrusted with seed and baroque pearls attached by thin gold wire. The whole was worn on a ribbon, tied around the throat.

The work of an unknown jeweler, the piece dates between 1800 and 1870.

 

Mastery of Design: The Crouzet Diamond and Pearl Brooch, 1860-70

Brooch
Crouzet, 1860-70
French
The Victoria & Albert Museum

Here we see an brooch of openwork gold, enameled in black set with diamonds and pearls, and dripping with pearls and diamond pendants

The brooch is attributed toCrouzet, a master jeweler who worked for all the major Parisian goldsmiths, and who was celebrated for his jewels of fine quality and unique design and his reliance on pieces in the Moroccan taste. This particular example of his work brooch seems to have been inspired by the " moresque " work of the renowned Parisian goldsmith Alphonse Fouquet. As with many of Crouzet’s pieces during this period, this brooch was designed to be worn during a period of mourning or half-mourning.

Mastery of Design: The Lahore Emerald Girdle, c. 1840

Crown Copyright
The Royal Collection
via The Royal Collection Trust
Image Courtesy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

The emeralds in this exquisite piece were inherited by India's Maharajah Sher Singh from Ranjit Singh, his father known as the "Lion of the Punjab."  "The Lion," it is said, had used the emeralds to decorate his horse harnesses.  The maharajah had the emeralds made into this exceptional girdle circa 1840.

Nine years later, the Directors of the East India Company obtained the belt and presented it to Queen Victoria in 1851.  

As we know, the East India Company was chartered, as early as the Seventeenth Century, to encourage trade between Britain and the East Indies.  The Company eventually came to rule huge geographic areas of India with its own private armies, and, in doing so, exercised military power while assuming administrative functions.

Company rule of India  began in 1757 after the Battle of Plassey and remained strong until 1858 when, after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the "Government of India Act 1858" concluded with the British Crown assuming direct control of the land under the new British Raj.

During this period of Company rule, India's leaders were often stripped of their treasures for the benefit of the Company.  This piece was one such treasure.

The Royal Collection states simply that the emerald girdle was...

"taken (as part of the Lahore Treasury) by the Directors of the East India Company, 1849; by whom given to Queen Victoria in 1851."

In short, many British royal jewels originating in India were legitimately given as gifts to the Company or to the Crown, but some were simply war booty, essentially taken from the Indian Maharajahs.  The largest collection of such treasures was taken from the Lahore Fort, just as this girdle was.  The exact number and nature of the jewels taken from the Lahore Treasure was closely guarded by  jewellers to the Royal family, Messrs Garrads & Co.  In fact, to this day, an official count is unknown.

Regardless of the manner in which they came into the collection over a century and a half ago, the curators of the Royal Collection have preserved and protected the jewels of The Lahore Treasury, and, in doing so have ensured their survival for future generations to study them.  This is the "give and take" of seized artifacts.  The way they were obtained may not have been too pleasant, but, ultimately, seizing them proves to protect them.

That's how I look at it, anyway.  But, enough of that, let's look at the girdle.

Crown Copyright
The Royal Collection
via The Royal Collection Trust
Image Courtesy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

The jeweled belt is comprised of eighteen rectangular gold sections separated by gold links and a buckle.  Each section is edged with diamond and pearl links and set with square or hexagonal emeralds, and four with engraved oval stones. The buckle of the girdle has a square emerald between rows of diamonds in a flowerhead design.  The diamonds are either flat-cut (lasques) or more regularly faceted stones cut either in the West or in India for the Western market. The pearls are probably Eighteenth Century or earlier.

On her visit to the Great Exhibition on 22 May 1851, Queen Victoria was particularly struck by the the magnificence of the items from the Lahore Treasury.  She wrote of the...

 "jewels & ornaments from Lahore, [which] are quite magnificent, - such pearls, - & a whole girdle of emeralds."

When the Great Exhibition concluded,  as I said, the Directors of the East India Company presented the Queen with a splendid selection of these jewels, including a quantity of emeralds, which she described as "wonderful and of immense value."

A good many of the loose emeralds were re-cut and set by Garrards in a new emerald and diamond parure, consisting of a tiara, stomacher and a pair of bracelets, which Victoria wore on her State Visit to Paris in 1855. 

This girdle, which the Queen had so admired, was among the other treasures from Lahore which remained unchanged, and therefore, afford us a window into the style and brilliant craftsmanship of Nineteenth Century Indian goldsmiths.

Mastery of Design: An Enamel, Pearl and Diamond Bracelet, 1875

Bracelet
Enamel, Pearls and Diamonds
French, 1875
The Victoria & Albert Museum

Today’s sparkly thing is a bracelet of translucent and plique-à-jour enamel in gold openwork, set with pearls and rose-cut diamonds.

It is the work of the renowned Parisian jeweler Frédéric Boucheron (1830-1902) and one of his team of fine designers and craftsmen--Charles Riffault. Riffault revived the technique of translucent or un-backed cloisonne enameling. Boucheron had exclusive rights to Riffault’s process and the firm who exhibited the technique at the International Exhiibtions of1867 and 1878.

Mastery of Design: An Eye Miniature, 19th C.

Miniature of watercolor on ivory
Nineteenth Century
The Victoria & Albert Museum

We’ve looked at quite a few of these jewel-framed miniature portraits of eyes. Eye miniatures were a curious but brief anomaly in miniature painting that enjoyed a short turn in fashion at the end of the 18th century.


These sentimental paintings were given as tokens of affection from a woman to a man, typically, in an attempt to capture “the window of the soul” and offer an into the subject’s most intimate thoughts and feelings.

This one was made in the early Nineteenth Century. As usual, the painting is watercolor on ivory. We’re not sure who created it, who the subject is or to whom it was given. The shape of the piece is unusual, elevating the subject into a new elegance. The pearls set into the gold frame indicate that this was meant as an important gift.

Mastery of Design: The Devlin "Blue Eyes" Brooches, 1978

The Victoria & Albert Museum

For some reason, I felt like dragging out these weird brooches, today. 

They put me in mind of the early 1990s paperback book cover from The Great Gatsby that sat on my desk in high school.  I thought that the ugliest book cover illustration, but I just adore (in Eva Gabor voice, even) these brooches.

Though kind of creepy, this pair of brooches is also cute and, certainly, opulent. The brooches are rendered in the form of two blue eyes with pupils of black pearls, irises of sapphires and diamonds, and the whites of diamonds. The eyelids are ridged in gold.

Historically, eyes were frequently depicted in jewelry—as portrait miniature mementos in elaborate jeweled frames which were given by a lady to her love. This work from the 1970s is an interesting play on that idea. And, truly, if you examine it, with the exception of the portrait miniatures, the use of human body parts in jewelry design has, historically, been anything but literal. Stuart Devlin, the creator of these “eye” brooches adds a note of surrealism to his design which make these jewels all the more interesting from an art historical standpoint and all the more flashy from the standpoint of fashion.

In London in the 1960s, a group of jewelers emerged, offering new ways of looking at jewelry and catering to women in high society who were once again turning to their jewels as a way of expressing their wealth and status. Like the jewelers of the Victorian era, these modern masters knew that, for the upper-class woman, what mattered most was an expression of individuality,

Stuart Devlin was certainly one of the best of this crop of contemporary British jewelers. The Australia-born Devlin was awarded a scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art, London in 1958 and afterwards at Columbia University in the US. In 1965, he returned to London and opened a workshop where he designed jewelry, silver, trophies, coinage, medallions, furniture and interiors. He was granted the Royal Warrant of Goldsmith and Jeweller to Her Majesty the Queen in 1982.

Mastery of Design: A Royal Scent Bottle

Scent Bottle
Crown Copyright
The Royal Collection
Image Courtesy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Little is known about this hardstone scent bottle from the Royal Collection.  Its date of creation is uncertain, and no one is quite sure from where it came.  It's likely, however, that Queen Mary added it to the Royal Collection since it's the sort of thing that was right up her alley.  

The bottle of carved blue-green agate is oval in section and meant to hold a fragrance.  It tapers to the gold base and the neck is mounted with four circle link chains from which it is meant to hand.  Gold mounts in floral arrangements are set with garnets, coral, a pearl and a diamond.  The stopper is fitted with garnet flower-heads.  

The Home Beautiful: The Froment-Meurice Bottle, 1854



Bottle
French, 1854
The Victoria & Albert Museum



This exceptional bottle of rock crystal is mounted in silver and silver-gilt, enameled and set with rubies and Baroque pearls. Its rectangular body is cut with oblique grooves, spreading neck, and a circular foot. The silver and gilt mounting is made up of sprays of enameled foliage set with pearls of various shapes and colors, tied by a ribbon enameled in black and set in rubies.


This is the work of François-Désiré Froment-Meurice in Paris, 1854. Here, François-Désiré Froment-Meurice is imitating the mounted rock crystals produced by Renaissance goldsmiths for court collections and earlier Egyptian vessels. The foliate decoration and the form of the bottle are, however, distinctively in the fashion of the 1850s.

Gifts of Grandeur: The ‘Queen Anne’ and ‘Queen Caroline’ Pearl Necklaces

Pair of Pearl Necklaces
Crown Copyright
The Royal Collection
Image Courtesy of Her Majesty
Queen Elizabeth II

These two necklaces are part of the private collection of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II. The first, a string of forty-six pearls once belonged to Queen Anne and, the next, a necklace of fifty pearls was owned by Queen Caroline.

They are always worn together and were given by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother) to Princess Elizabeth as a wedding present in 1947. Prior to the wedding, they were cleaned and serviced by Garrards who has looked after the pearls since 1896.

History's Runway: The "Elvis" Dress, 1989

"The Elvis Dress"
Catherine Walker, 1989
This and all related images from:
The Victoria & Albert Museum

When I picture Diana, Prince of Wales, it is this gown which she’s wearing. Just one of the many iconic gowns worn by the late Princess, for some reason, this one always sticks in my memory. Known as “The Elvis Dress” (a nickname given to the ensemble by the princess herself because of the similarity of the high white collar of the jacket to those on the jumpsuits worn by Mr. Presley at his most rotund), this dress and matching bolero speak volumes of the stream-lined style favored by the Princess of Wales in the late 1980s.

Well aware of her status as a fashion icon and style-setter, the Princess of Wales was always careful to don only the most flattering and fashionable garments when out for an elegant and formal evening. By the late 1980s, Princess Diana had pushed aside the fuller-cuts, crinolines and flowing chiffons of her earlier days in favor of bolder textures and sleek, tailored gowns. I think this gown is the epitome of that trend. 

The strapless gown of white silk is encrusted with pearls and sequins. It’s given a sense of drama by the tall collar of the matching bolero. It’s the work of Catherine Walker, a favorite
couturière of the Princess of Wales. Diana’s association with Walker began during her pregnancy with Prince William of Wales in 1981. Walker continued to design for the Princess until Diana’s death in 1997.

The princess wore the ensemble to the British Fashion Awards in October 1989, on an official visit to Hong Kong, and, later for an official portrait. The gown had actually been commissioned for the official visit to Hong Kong. Walker envisioned a sheath of pearls for the occasion. Tens of thousands of pearls—long a symbol of the “orient”--were embroidered onto the dress and jacket.

Walker would recall in 2012: “Whenever I saw the Princess in this dress, I could not help but feel that it would not be possible for anyone else ever to wear this dress and bolero. She shone in the dress and the dress shone around her in a shimmering column of glistening pearls.”

It was one of the 79 dresses which the Princess of Wales sold in a charity auction in 1997. The auction, held by Christie’s, raised over three million pounds for AIDS and cancer research. A commemorative doll of the princess shows her in this dress.

Saturday Sparkle: The Bettine Diamond and Pearl Buckle, c. 1910

Buckle
The Victoria and Albert Museum

From the collection of "The Bettine," Lady Abingdon, we have this handsome buckle of ebonite, gold, silver, pearls and diamonds.

Made circa 1900-1910, this buckle pin probably heralds from the United States.  It's the sort of pin which would have adorned a lady's jacket, or even her shoes, worn in pairs.

Mastery of Design: The Froment-Meurice Coral Bacchus, 1854

This and all related images from:
The Victoria & Albert Museum

We've looked at several pieces by the Nineteenth Century French jewelers Froment -Meurice.  This piece in coral, gold, silver, pearls and a shimmering rose-cut diamond is one of the most exceptional. 

 Coral has long been valued, used as a jewel since antiquity and believed to be an amulet which could protect against the evil eye.  For the latter reason, it was was often worn by children or used in rosaries.

Froment-Meurice, like other jewelers of the era, looked back at historical designs.  This piece is a perfect example of that mentality.  This pendant  with a coral cameo depicting Bacchus has a sculpted gold frame decorated with winged mermaids and hung with pearls and diamond sparks.  It was probably one of the last sets of jewelry to be sold by the Paris jeweler François-Désiré Froment-Meurice before his death in 1855 . 

Mastery of Design: A Gold, Diamond and Enamel Memorial Slide, 1775-1800

Memorial Slide
French, 1775-1800
The Victoria & Albert Musem

This gold brooch with silver-set rose cut diamonds, adorned with a basket of flowers in seed pearls, mother of pearl and gold--mounted on blue enamel—represents the sort of memorial jewelry which was prevalent in France in the Late Eighteenth Century.

Memorial jewelry was designed to honor a lost loved one. Given the mortality rate, memorial jewelry is one of the largest categories of jewels from this era to survive since it was the most prevalent.

Memorial medallions, brooches or lockets was quite the fashion during this era both in France and Britain. Some of them, like this brooch, could be worn in a variety of ways. For example, this brooch is considered a “slide” since it was, most frequently, worn on a ribbon around the throat. These pieces often incorporated the hair of the deceased either displayed behind glass or Stuart crystal or woven and braided into a design amongst the jewels.

Nei-classical motifs of funerary urns, plinths and obelisks were common themes along with the more traditional cherubs, angels and weeping willows. We should note, however, that not all of these pieces were meant as memorial jewelry. Some of it was meant to express love, friendship and devotion for the living and to act as a keepsake.

Mastery of Design: The Hull-Grundy Garnet and Pearl Necklace

Garnet and Seed-Pearl Necklace
Circa 1830
The Hull-Grundy Bequest
This and all related images from:
The British Museum

A delicate necklace, designed in the form of leafy entwined flowers, this work of seed-pearls and gold-set diamonds was made in England in the 1830s in the Naturalistic style which was rising in fashion at the time.


Given to The British Museum as part of the Hull-Grundy bequest, the necklace is displayed in its original presentation case though the satin lining of the lid was replaced in the 1970s. 

Mastery of Design: A Bracelet from Queen Victoria's Silver Jubilee, 1862

This bracelet of gold, with enameled decoration, is set with an almandine garnet and pearls and was shown by the Bragg firm at the International Exhibition of 1862, where it was purchased by the Victoria & Albert Museum.

This bracelet coincided with the Silver Jubilee of Queen Victoria and also showed the influence the Queen’s personal style had upon the fashions of the day. This was the sort of jewelry favored by Prince Albert who often designed pieces for his wife in earth-tones and materials which reflected the couple’s love of the country.