Beads, Briolettes And Rondelles

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

Beads, Briolettes and Rondellas have two features in common: a body covered all over with tiny facets, and the absence of a girdle by which gems are normally held in their settings (a few Girdled Briolletes do exist, but these are exceptions). The facets are usually triangular or squarish or, less frequently, long and narrow. Since they have no girdle, these diamonds are either drilled through from side to side or, in th case of Briolettes, downwards through the point. They are then threaded on wire or on a ring to hang on a chain. The type of piercing is dictated by the shape of the diamond and determines the use to which the stone will be put in a piece of jewelry.

The fashioning of diamond Beads, Briolettes and Rondellas was obviously inspired by the endless variety of such forms already in use thousands of years before Christ: ‘Perhaps the most convenient and welcome of all substitutes for currency was beads. Beads are the Adam and Eve of jewelry family and their countless progeny have spread over all the inhabited lands of the earth from the darkest jungles of Africa to the icebound countries of the far north. Beads were cherished in the magnificent courts of the Pharaohs, and they flourish today in the ‘five-and-tens’ of the New World. The jeweler of ancient times seems to have delighted in seeing how many different kinds of beads he could make. There were minute carved beads, balls of amethyst, and melon-shaped beads of limpid rock crystal, pale red carnelian beads shaped like an hour glass, and cynlindrical beads of green felspar....’