Jewelers Of Italy

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

6. Ornaments And Artists

The Roman lady of fashion wore her hair most elaborately dressed. She was much addicted to fillets and diadems, as may be observed from various statues and pictures. Hairpins, in ancient Rome, were no inconsequent trifle bought by the package; each pin was the work of te jeweler. Often they were of solid gold and long enough to suggest a rather formidable weapon, should the lady be in need of one. There is one such hairpin in the British Museum. It is eight inches long and made of gold in the form of shaft topped with a Corinthian capital.

Bracelets were popular article of jewelry, for the upper arm as well as the wrist. Wrist bracelets, in general, were of two kinds, either in the same form as necklaces (without pendants) or made in two rounded halves connected by a hinge. Imperial gold coins were frequently introduced into almost any kind of jewelry, even into rings.

For their designs, gem engravers borrowed freely from the work of painters and sculptors. They would copy a figure from a painting or a whole statue, pedestal and all, translating picture or statue into a miniature design cut on the hard surface of red jasper. Many works of art, the originals of which were destroyed long since, have been preserved to us in the tiny form of engraved gems.

Sometimes a painter turnred the tables and chose for his subject the shop of the jeweler. A case in point still exists in the form of a mural decoration. But the artist was not minded to give a literal representation of the scene. In his painting he has visualized the craft of the goldsmith as a calling lifted to some fantastic level outside the confines of our workaday world. He painted the shop itself true to life with the usual furnishings and implements of furnace, anvil, blowpipes, hammers, scales, etc. But when it came to the workers he would have us believe that the shop is entirely taken over by a flock of chubby cupids with the traditional curly locks and little wings. Each cupid is busily engaged in one of the various tasks of the master goldsmith and his apprentices. Conspicuous among these infantile workers is the customer, a lady evidently about to purchase some precious stones which the small jeweler, standing before her, is weighing in the scales. Unlike the other characters, the lady is full grown, but like them she is blessed with a pair of decorative, though quite inadequate, wings.

In spite of the playful spirit of its representations this picture (barring the cupids) may be taken as a faithful portrait of the industry of jewelry making. The mural decoration was found in one of the rooms of the house of the Vetii at Pompeii.

On that fateful day in the year 79 A.D. when disaster came to Pompeii, the majority of its inhabitants fled in time. Among evidences of failure to escape have been found the little hoards of jewels which were so hurriedly snatched up and carried until death overtook their owners. Our old friend, Pliny, who might so well have written a graphic account of the calamity, leaves us no record of it; for in his effort to get near enough to give an eye witness report, he himself was suffocated by the poisonous fumes of Vesuvius.

Jewelers Of Italy (continued)