Painted enamels in flower patterns are found not only on the shoulders of rings, but covering the entire outer surface. Occasionally flowers enamelled à jour occur, the hoop of the ring being hollow. Lord Falkland possesses a good example of one of these rings encircled with coloured flowers (Pl. XLIV, 8). The hollow space is filled with hair. Within the hoop is the posy Difficulty sweetens enjoyment. Mottoes or posies of this kind were occasionally engraved on mediæval rings and on those of the sixteenth century, but the majority of the large number of rings on which such mottoes occur belong to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Unlike the example just mentioned, these rings, with the motto engraved inside them, usually have plain hoops, and were used as engagement, and sometimes as wedding rings. The mottoes generally rhyme, but are not remarkable for poetic skill, and they are found constantly repeated. Numbers of the verses employed for the purpose are given in Jones's Finger-Ring Lore, and in an article published by Sir John Evans in Longman's Magazine (1892). A few examples will suffice: As God decreed so we agreed; God above increase our love; This take for my sake; The love is true I owe you; In thee my choice I do rejoice. Posy rings, like mourning rings, to be referred to later, are almost exclusively English. As regards the ordinary ornamental ring of the period, it is to be observed that the diamond, which came so much to the front at this time, found a prominent place on it. Towards the close of the century, though enamel-work is still visible, the purpose of the ring, as at the present day, seems to have been nothing more than for displaying the diamond on the finger, so far as one may judge from some of Légaré's designs (Pl. XL, 2).
The girdle in the seventeenth century was still an important ornament for ladies. The great portrait painters of the Low Countries present ladies wearing massive linked chains terminating in elaborate pomanders. Not infrequently the lady is shown, as in a picture by Gerard Douffet at Munich, holding the pomander in her hand. A fine pomander is seen in a portrait of a Flemish lady by Cornelis de Vos in the Wallace Collection, and one of extraordinary beauty is worn by a Dutch lady in a splendid picture by Frans Hals in the Cassel Gallery. Amongst the various seventeenth-century girdles to be found in public collections, without doubt the most remarkable are two examples, one in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the other in the Wallace Collection. They represent the species of enamel-work known as émail en résille sur verre, which was employed during the latter part of the sixteenth and the early seventeenth century for miniature and mirror cases—of which specimens in the Morgan Collection and the Louvre have already been noticed—and for the dials of watches. The girdle at South Kensington, of French work of the early seventeenth century, is formed of twenty-one oblong and slightly convex plates linked together by rosettes. These plates, of silver, are filled with glass paste, which is backed with coloured foils and inlaid with minute designs in translucent enamel on gold, representing hunting and other country scenes. The chain in the Wallace Collection, which might possibly have been worn as a neck-chain, is almost identical in subject and design, save that the oblong links number eighteen, while the rosettes uniting them are enamelled and set with garnets.
The jewel which best represents the various kinds of decoration in the way of engraving and enamel-work applied to seventeenth-century ornaments is the watch. From the early part of the century the round form, more or less flat, which has been preserved from that time to the present day, began to be generally adopted for watches. All the different species of work employed on miniature-cases are found on watch dial-plates and cases. The interesting cosse de pois ornament is represented in the British Museum on the dial-plate of a watch by D. Bouquet of London, of about 1630-1640. It is executed by the rare process just described—the pattern being inlaid on gold upon a ground of green glass or enamel. Another watch, by Vautier of Blois, has the centre of the dial enriched with translucent enamel in gold cloisons on opaque white. Among watches with richly decorated cases there is in the same collection another by Bouquet, beautifully enamelled with flowers in relief, of various colours and kinds, on a black ground encrusted with small diamonds. Besides the names already mentioned, the best-known enamellers of watch-cases from about 1680 to 1700 were the brothers Huault, or Huaud, of Geneva, who worked also at Berlin.
No more examples need be given of the different species of enamel applied to seventeenth-century jewellery. Enough has been said to demonstrate the importance and attractiveness of the comparatively little-known enamel-work of this time.
During the greater part of the seventeenth century the watch was simply hung by a chain to the girdle, as we see it on the two portraits (about 1645) of the wife of John Tradescant the younger in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. The elaborate chatelaines which attached the watch to women's girdles, and the chains which hung from the fob-pocket of men, belong rather to the eighteenth century; but they were already in use, and from them were suspended that most attractive article of jewellery, the seal, which was then beginning to take the place of the signet ring. Evelyn, in his Mundus Muliebris, or Voyage to Marryland (1690), gives a rhyming catalogue of a lady's toilet, and alludes to the chatelaine:—
To which a bunch of onyxes,
And many a golden seal there dangles,
Mysterious cyphers, and new fangles.
The designs of Légaré contain several charming pendent seals having their shanks or handles finely worked with monograms and other patterns (Pl. XL). Seals, however, together with the chatelaine and the rest of its accompaniments, will be spoken of later.
There remain various pieces of jewellery, such as buckles, clasps, or brooches, which were sprinkled on different parts of the dress. Like the sévigné or breast ornament, they often take the form of a tied bow, and find a place on the arms and shoulders, and in rows down the front of the bodice and the skirt. In the latter part of the century jewelled buckles replaced the rosette of ribbons on the shoe. Thus again Evelyn speaks of:—
Diamond buckles too,
For garters, and as rich for shoo
A manteau girdle, ruby buckle,
And brilliant diamond rings for knuckle.
. . . . . . . . . .
A saphire bodkin for the hair,
Or sparkling facet diamonds there:
Then turquois, ruby, emrauld rings
For fingers, and such petty things;
As diamond pendants for the ears,
Must needs be had, or two pearl pears,
Pearl neck-lace, large and oriental,
And diamond, and of amber pale.
ENGLAND, SEVENTEENTH CENTURY