Jewelers Of The Seventeenth Century

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

5. The Flower Motive

Although the glitter and sparkle of the diamond gave it first place as a jewel in the French Court, enamel had by no means lost its vogue. It was employed in graceful designs, carried out in silhouettes of white on a black ground; or the enamel might by polychrome; or again, a surface of monochrome enamel was painted with fusible colors.

French jewelers had turned for inspiration to the vegetable kingdom. Leaves and flowers were made of gold and gems, or painted on enamel, crowded the market. One design in particular, based on the pea-pod (genre cosse de pois), was especially characteristic of the times.

Tulips also held a prominent place in design. Then, even as now, current events influenced fashion, and it was during the first half of the seventeenth century that Holland went mad over tulips. At this time occured one of the most curious epidemic crazes of history. A single tulip bulb brought $5200. Men bought and sold bulbs not yet existing or divided the value of individual bulbs into shares. Of course with such a trumpheting of publicity the tulip was bound to be featured in the fashions.

Painted enamel was especially adapted to the naturalistic representation of flowers. Not only tulips, but roses, lilies, hyacinths and other flowers conventionally woven into garlands and festoons were exquisitely pictured on background of uniform color. One scarcely knows whether the craftsmen should be called a painter or a jeweler.

As the flower motive was developed in England the very setting of a gem was composed of massed flowers wrought in gold or gold and enamel.