The New World

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

Certain parts or even whole designs were often wrought, with great skill, entirely of human hair glued to the background. Or the design might be a ‘hair painting’. We have no documents to explain the technique of this lost art, but microscopic examination discloses the fact that finely chopped hair was mixed with the pigments. Somewhat less gloomy was the miniature (portrait) of the deceased mounted on a background of his or her hair—excellent for a locket.

Miniature portrait painters found it expedient to add ‘hair work’ to their artistic accomplishments and accordingly placed in the newspapers of the day such advertisements as this:

Miniature Painting. Hair work, etc. done in the neatest manner.

Or, expressed with more distinction:

All Kinds of Hair Devices made in the most elegant style.

Watchchains and bracelets were made of hair intricately plaited in many strands. Sometimes the braid was caught at intervals by medallions of wrought gold. When the hair was rich in color the effect was surprisingly pleasing—if you did not stop to think about it.

Charles Dickens (1812-70) in Great Expectations draws attention to mourning jewelry as worn in England. America could claim an equivalent propensity to advertise bereavement in like manner.

I judged him to be a bachelor (says Dickens) from the frayed condition of his linen, and he appeared to have sustained a good many bereavements; for he wore at least four mourning rings, besides a brooch representing a lady and a weeping willow at a tomb with an urn on it. I noticed, too, several rings and seals hung at his watchchain, as if he were quite laden with rememberances of departed friends.

Of course, in inspite of fashionable gloom there was also a brighter side of life to be represented by jewelry of the Victorian period. Red coral delicately carved and mounted in gold; purple amethyst set with pearls; amber and carnelian were wont to add their charm of color to the costumes of dainty ladies.

A funnel-shaped bouquet, the flowers formally arranged in concentric rings, was in accessory to the ball gown, and to carry this, without danger to gloves, a silver filigree bouquet-holder was the last word of sophisticated elegance.

The year 1849 brought spectacular discovery of gold in the West and the consequent famous gold rush of the Forty-niners. As yet there was no railroad extending from coast to coast across the continent; but the avid fever of desire for gold travels regardless of highways. It gripped even those who lived on the far shores of the Atlantic, for news of gold is broadcast without benefit of airmail or radio. To many men gold was a loadstone of incalculable power—go they must, no matter how difficult. And the going was mighty difficult. The best they could do was to take ship down the coast to the Isthmus of Panama, where a crude railroad ran only part way across the Isthmus (there was no navigable canal in ’49). The road was still unfinished, its rails coming to an abrupt end in the wilderness. At the last tie, there was nothing for it but to get out and walk, crawl, climb, wade as best they could through tropical, fever-haunted jungles and swamps. But what matter? There was gold drawing them onward. Some died by the way, but a surprising number of men reached the Pacific Coast, where they again took ship and sailed toward their hearts’ desire. This time it was no mirage but real American gold not to be disproved.

Markets on the Atlantic Coast leaped to the new impetus and gold jewelry became the order of the day.

Some years before the famous gold rush (about 1837) a shop had been opened on Broadway in New York City. It carried stationery and fancy goods with a side-line of jewelry. At first the shop could not have been either very large or impressive, for it was originally established on a borrowed capital of only one thousand dollars. But it prospered from the start. The business was run by two young American merchants, John B Young and Charles Louis Tiffany.

Presently it was found that their stock of jewelry had to be increased because it was growing more important than the stationery. In ten years’ time the partners were manufacturing gold jewelry, and from then on the course of the great House of Tiffany was definitely set.

The next year, 1848, was a troublous year for the Old Country though not for the New. There was an epidemic of revolutions among the various peoples of Europe. One after another they began to rise and defy their governing classes. Those in office, from kings downwards, were sent flying for safety—anywhere so it was out of their own countries. Paris, never to be outdone in such matters, was staging a revolution of sorts. Aristrocrats in sudden flight from France must have money on the instant, and the quickest way to get it was to sell their jewels.

And because such a great number of diamonds had all at once been thrown on the market, their price dropped fifty per cent. Here was the chance of a century for a diamond merchant.

As it happened, John Young had gone to Paris that very year. Tiffany, in New York, sent hurried word to his partner to buy all the diamonds in Paris that he could lay hands on, and bring them back to America.

Americans were buying, not selling, diamonds. This move reaped a fortune and the growing business required more room; it moved and continued at intervals to move again, each time into larger and more impressive quarters. The firm name became Tiffany and Company in 1851. Branches were established in London and Paris, and today, as one of the leading jewelers of America, Tiffany’s imposing shop stands on the New World’s most famous highway—glamorous Fifth Avenue in New York City.

The New World (continued)