JEWELRY, ornaments for personal adorn ment, usually made of gems and precious metals. At some remote period primitive man gradually migrated northward from the tropical belt in which the species probably first came into existence, and as he felt the colder tem perature severe and trying, especially at night, i he was induced to invent some sort of covering or clothing, by means of which he could secure warmth. What the first clothing was, it is of course impossible to determine, but it may be conjectured to.have consisted of belts of grass or leaves, knotted together either by their own stacks, or by accessory vegetable fibres. When men became hunters, which they did not do until they had progressed far enough to have invented offensive weapons, they no doubt soon used dried skins for clothing. A rough tan ning of such skins could have been managed by rubbing them with fat. Then came the difficulty of fastening them. Some savage tribes still wear cloaks which have only a hole cut for the head to go through, and this is likely to be a primitive type; then, also, they might have been tied up with strips of sinew, but at an early stage they were pinned together with a bone or large thorn. Here is the germ of the brooch. Numbers of such pins have been found in all places where the remains of primitive man ex ist, and they range from the simplest forms to quite ornamental ones. The heads of the carved specimens show a certain amount of progression, and are often decorated with en graved lines, dots and circles. Ivory, wood and bone are all commonly used, and in time, as metal working became known, these early pins are imitated in bronze and gold. From the Stone Age, through the Bronze Age, up to the Iron Age, in which we are still considered to be, pins and their derivatives, brooches and buckles, have been universally used, and it is an interesting study to endeavor to trace their utilitarian development, as well as that of their artistic and technical beauties. Starting with the earliest metal pins, it soon appears that the head, or thickened end, is treated ornamentally, hammered flat, and pierced. Through the pierced hole in the top of the pin are often found wire rings coiled several times, or single rings, as in a number of specimens from Ireland. In the case of Roman jewels found in Britain, there are chains of which a few links only are left, and in one instance at least a pin, the head of which was threaded with a chain of several links, was taken from among the debris of one of the Swiss lake-dwellings. The modern
safety-pin is quite the same in all essential re spects as one which was found by Dr. Schlie mann at Mycenz, and the same form, with the arch more or less specialized in design, has been very largely used north and south, east and west. The Greeks made the arch short, and enlarged and ornamented the nose or hol low for the pin to rest in; the Romans made the arch big, set it with beads of amber and bronze, and fretted it out in innumerable ways, with curves, spirals and all sorts of twists and turns which the fancy of the artist could de vise. The Roman fibula. are more usually made of bronze or silver, but the Greek are largely of gold, and of exquisite workmanship.
Of the principal tools that have been and are still used in the production of jewelry, the hammer in some form, at first of flint or some other hard stone, and later of metal, was prob ably the earliest employed, then we have the chisel and later the pointed graver, for en graving a design, and the drill for perforation, either the simple pointed drill, or else the bow drill that has been used from the North Pole to the South Pole, by Hindus and Chinese, by civilized and semi-civilized peoples. Another essential article is a small crucible of clay, or even hardened sand, in which the metals to be used for soldering can be melted. It is im portant that only easily fusible metals be em ployed for this purpose, as those less easily fusible would be liable to make an imperfect joining and would probably break down. Setting precious stones in points, or galleries as they are called, initiated about a century ago, has led to machine stamping, the galleries be ing cut off, the settings stamped out and the stones fitted to the points which are then bent over. The free use of machine work has done much to lessen the artistic beauty of jewels. On the other hand we have to recognize that the employment of platinum settings, which has been general since 1900, has marked a notable advance. Large pieces of platinum, carefully drilled, with the metal filed away in the clear spaces between the platinum and the stone, make the latter stand out for itself, while in the gold settings formerly used the yellow metal was apt to obtrude itself too much. Sometimes precious stones are set in platinum worked into a weblike texture.