Silversmiths and Goldsmiths Work

Jewellery.

There is not the same break between prehistoric and classical jewellery as between other gold and silverwork and arts in general. It is true that certain types of ornament went out of fashion at various times and places, but the ancient jeweller's craft seems to have been rather cosmopolitan, and designs of common articles, earrings, bracelets and necklaces, were universal and persistent. The outstanding feature of ancient jewellery is its large display of figured surface, generally result ing in a tinsel fabric. The earliest specimens of Aegean jewels come from opposite ends of that region, Troy and Crete, and are contemporary (c. 2500 B.C.). The Trojan are the more elaborate but the elements are the same in both : thin wire in linked and plaited chains and coils, thin foil in petals and rosettes. The largest Trojan diadem or pectoral is made of 90 gold chains fringed with tiny scales and supporting foil-pendants. The sim plest earrings are swelling hoops, simple or multiple or enriched with transverse bands. They are identical with archaic Greek types 2,000 years later. A more elaborate earring is a horizontal half-cylinder made of wire or plate with rosettes along its front upper edge and pendent discs below. This also reappears in the archaic period as the basket-earring of Etruria, doubtless an Ionian importation. Pinheads and bracelets are decorated with applied rosettes and spiral coils, and the pins are crowned with rows of little jugs. A plaited wire bracelet at Troy is reflected in a foil bracelet stamped with the same pattern at Mochlos in Crete.

This Early Minoan group contains many flower-headed pins, re lated on the one side to Trojan decorative rosettes, on the other to Sumerian hair ornaments. Granulation occurs on Trojan ear rings, and was doubtless used at the same time in Crete, but very little jewellery has been found there, and earrings are scantily represented even in the wealth of the Mycenae shaft-graves. The swelling hoop was Mycenaean, and often had a pendent globule cluster, which was ultimately enlarged into the semblance of a bull's head with granulated muzzle and coiled wire ears. The shaf t grave jewels are mostly diadems and hairpins, bracelets and pectorals, bead-necklaces and pendants, signet and finger-rings and plaques for decorating clothes. Thin plates cut and embossed in animal and floral forms served for all these ornaments. They are very seldom cast or wrought. Stone inlay is rare, but stone beads are often mounted in gold, and enamel is not uncommon. European and oriental (Phoenician) elements are combined in a treasure from Aegina, now in the British Museum, which belongs to the very end of the Mycenaean age, c. i000 B.C. Its designs are mainly stylized openwork figures fringed with small pendants.

In the following period diadems, bracelets and earrings were decorated by the old processes of stamping, granulation and enamelling in the new Geometric style. Archaic Greek and Italian jewellery (7oo-500 B.c.) was almost wholly oriental in design, Egyptian and Assyrian models of Phoenician introduction being reinforced by rich Ionian and Lydian wares. New forms in

Greece and Etruria were the coiled bracelets and earrings ending in heads of lions and bulls, pomegranate, lotus and palmette pen dants, winged figures of sphinxes and sirens and masks of satyrs. But the technique was unchanged. Embossed plates are the basis of the work, stamped with separate punches or hammered into dies, and finished singly or joined back to back around a plaster core. Granulation was brought to an amazing fineness, particu larly in Etruria. Patterns were precisely drawn in a field of minute grains, which were fused into globules and soldered to their background in one operation. In Greek 5th century work granulation is displaced by filigree, and enamel reappears. The style of this and the next century aims at elegance and delicacy. Necklaces consist of pendent flowers and tassels in a trellis of finely plaited ropes; flower-petals are variegated with enamel. Hoops of earrings are masked with filigreed rosettes and discs, and support elaborate pendants. Victories, Cupids and doves were favoured here by Hellenistic sentiment, and a strange but quite popular Graeco-Roman type was made with pendent vases. A change of fashion at this time, doubtless under oriental influence, introduced large coloured stones, at first garnets, in the cen tres of designs, and the new decorative principle became domi nant in Roman jewellery. The stones are cut in simple shapes arid grouped in rows by colour, blue, red, green, sapphire, garnet, plasma, with pearl borders. They are usually plain, but some times engraved as cameos or intaglios. In the closing period, from the 3rd century A.D., gold coins of contemporary and earlier emperors were also set like gems, and the goldsmith's skill was mainly exercised upon the borders and backgrounds. These bear arcaded patterns in chased relief and open-work, a bold and heavy style which, with colour-decoration, ousted the classical figure-work, and gave its character to the jewellery of mediaeval Europe.

During the first six centuries there existed two principal sources of production of early Christian silver vessels : the Hellen istic and the Persian. The designs consisted often of figure compositions. Antioch was an important centre for goldsmiths' work after the 4th century, and here was made, in the 4th or 5th century, the "Antioch" chalice, now privately owned in New York City. From the loth century, church vessels, especially chalices, became more sumptuous and were occasionally enriched with enamel and gems. Among extant early silver is the Esqui line treasure, Hellenistic in character, and the Lampsacus treasure, both in the British Museum ; and the sacred treasure of Luxor, 5th to 6th centuries, now at Cairo. In the Metropolitan Museum at New York is the 6th century treasure from Cyprus, probably part of the same "find" as the objects at Nicosia and in the British Museum.