Jewelers Of Italy

(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:

3. Jewels Of The Roman Empire

Caesar was dead. Rome was on her way toward a different form of government, and with these changes came a change in ideology, affecting styles and customs. We find no record of just when the Roman dandy first risked the accusation of effeminacy and ventured to adorn his fingers with numbers of rings. We do not know whether the fashion developed slowly or whether it sprang up like wildfire overnight, for the solemn historian is prone to neglect such details. It took Pliny (who doubtless would be a most successful columnist were he living today) to give us the human-interest side of the news. Pliny, however, did not enter the scene until about the middle of the first century A.D., and by then the fashion of wearing an extravagant amount of jewelry had reached such proportions as to make exceedingly good copy for the lively pen of that gossipy old Roman. He gives us some colorful pictures. For instance, he reports on the simple betrothal ceremony of a Roman girl: ‘She was covered from head to foot with pearls and emeralds.’ And he compares at length the current fashion of wearing innumerable rings with the good old custom of confining rings to the fourth finger of one hand:

It was the custom at first to wear rings on a single finger only, the one namely that is next to the little finger, and thus we see the case in the statues of Numa and Servius Tullius. In later times it became the practice to put rings on the finger next to the thumb, even in the case of the statues of the gods; and, more recently again, it has become the fashion to wear them upon the little finger as well. Among the people of Gallia and Britannia, the middle finger, it is said, is used for this purpose. At the present day, however, among us, this is the only finger that is excepted, all others being loaded with rings, smaller rings even being separately adapted for the smaller joints of the finger. Some there are who heap several rings on the little finger alone.

Seneca, too, expressed himself on the extremes of fashion, declaring: ‘We adorn our fingers with rings, and a jewel is displayed on every joint.’

Orators were cautioned against overloading their hands with rings; and Pliny, disgusted by such display of vanity, declared that they piqued themselves upon a thing in which only musicians glory. Such a comparison carried a sharp sting, for in those days musicians were considered no better than jugglers and buffoons—in the lowest class of entertainers.

During all this period, glass-making in Rome was flourishing industry. Besides ornamental bowls, vases, jugs, and so on, the glassmaker turned out countless trinkets such as twisted glass bangles, finger rings, bracelets and beads—innumerable beads of all colors, styles and sizes. The glass factory of that day consisted of only one small furnace run by a master glassman with the help of a slave or two. Certain of the glass makers specialized in the making of paste gems. Not only was the blue of lapis lazuli and the chestnut brown of sard duplicated in glass, but even the onyx, with its bands of light and dark, was expertly imitated.

Now it is quite usual for current books on gems to dismiss the pastes of the Roman glass maker as merely a practical method of providing colorful ring stones for those who could not afford the costly gems of the Orient. But it is well to hold in mind that in those days, and for centuries to follow, gems were largely judged on the basis of color only. To the man who was not an expert in differentiating between stones, a ruby, a garnet and a bit of ruby-colored glass might appear of equal value, and a rich red bit of glass might even seem more desirable than a pale ruby of uneven color. The glass maker of the first century A D was not above devoting his best efforts to the imitation of real stones with an eye to selling them at fabulous prices. Indeed, so prevalent was the custom of counterfeiting gems that Pliny cautioned buyers to beware of the treacherous practise.

By this time most of the precious and semi-precious stones known to us had been discovered and there is reason to believe the list now included the diamond. Greek writers of earlier days speak of the adamas (invincible) and some students point to this as proof that the diamond was known to the Greeks. However, they applied the term equally to hard metals and to emery (corundum) and there is nothing to indicate that any hard stone, such as the colorless sapphire (also corundum) did not have a better claim to the name adamas than did the diamond.

Pliny describes the adamas of his time as a stone found among the river sands of India. Some varieties, he says, resemble in shape two pyramids placed placed base to base. Since the octahedron is a form characteristic of certain diamond crystals, the river stones were probably true diamonds.

The manner of testing a genuine adamas was severe. According to Pliny the stone was placed on an anvil and hammered. If the blow broke the crystal it was proof that the gem was false; but if on the other hand, the crystal broke the anvil then it was a real adamas! Since even a diamond can be shattered into fragments by the moderate blow of a hammer, no precious stone could have survived the drastic test.

Jewelers Of Italy (continued)