Arnold Lulls

(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:

In the library of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London there is a most remarkable album depicting jewels that date from about 1550 to 1610. This is Arnold Lull’s record of the treasures of Queen Anne of Denmark. Some of the drawings were intended as a record of jewels acquired by Anne from 1603 to 1625 after her marriage to King James I of England. To some extent, the album is a pictorial inventory (similar to Mielich’s Kleinodienbuch) of the jewels delivered by Lulls and his collaborators. Some of the pieces are believed to be Lull’s own designs.

Arnold Lull himself was a Dutch jeweler and dealer who appears to have moved to London in 1585, but retained his Dutch nationality. His drawings illustrate a wide range of historic diamond cuts, mostly Table Cuts, square, rectangular and lozenge-shaped, but also a large number of fancy outlines. It is fascinating to find a number of diamond cuts that were obselete by about 1600 and, rather surprisingly, two different Stellar Cut Tables, predecessors of the Brilliants of a later period. The three Chequer Cut diamonds are equally interesting to a diamond historian. There are also two jewels containing Table Cut diamonds of gradually decreasing size set in a row, the earliest known example of this style, now popular with modern designers.