early nineteenth-century jewellery
The pictures in the gallery at Versailles afford perhaps the best idea of ornaments in the Empire style; since jewellery is more clearly represented on French portraits than on any others of the time. Among the most striking of such portraits are those of Marie Pauline, Princess Borghese, by Lefèvre, of Caroline Buonaparte, Queen of Naples, by Madame Vigée-Lebrun, and of Madame Mère, by Gérard. The first has a high comb and bandeau, earrings, and girdle, all decorated with cameos, the second a parure of pearls and cameos, and the third a head-ornament mounted with a single large cameo. The coronation of Napoleon in 1804 furnished the painter David with the subject of a picture unrivalled in its kind—"Le Sacre de Napoleon ier à Notre-Dame," which is exhibited in the Louvre. This grandiose production, besides being a truly epic rendering of a great historical event, serves as a valuable document in the history of jewellery, in that it represents jewellery of the most magnificent kind carried by Josephine, the princesses, and the ladies of honour. The Empress is shown wearing comb and diadem of precious stones, brilliant earrings, and a bracelet on the wrist formed of two rows of jewels united with a cameo. Her suite have, besides, necklaces and girdles mounted in several cases with cameos. Josephine herself possessed a perfect passion for engraved gems, and she actually induced Napoleon to have a number of antique cameos and intaglios removed from the gem collection in the Royal Library and made up into a complete parure of jewellery for her own use.
A German speciality of the expiring Empire was the cast-iron jewellery, brought into favour largely on account of the prevailing scarcity of gold and silver. A foundry for its production was first set up in 1804 at Berlin, where articles of great fineness were cast in sand moulds. In the year 1813, the time of the rising against the Napoleonic usurpation, more than eleven thousand pieces of iron jewellery were turned out, and among them five thousand crosses of the new order of the Iron Cross. In that year appeared the well-known iron rings. During the War of Liberation, when every man joined the Prussian regiments to fight against the French, the patriotic ladies who remained behind laid at the Altar of the Fatherland their valuable jewels, which were melted down for the benefit of the national war-chest. For the articles thus surrendered they received in exchange from the Government iron finger rings bearing the words "Eingetauscht zum Wohle des Vaterlandes," or the famous inscription "Gold gab ich für Eisen." In addition to crosses and rings, other jewels, such as diadems, necklaces, brooches, and bracelets, were executed in cast iron, open-worked and in relief (Pl. LI, 8). Complete parures comprising a comb, necklace, earrings, and bracelets are not infrequently met with, and the name of the manufacturer, such as "Geiss, Berlin," etc., is sometimes found stamped on them. Most of the work is in the antique taste, and is occasionally adorned with classical heads in the manner of Wedgwood and Tassie. Considering the material and method of production, the fineness and lace-like delicacy of this iron jewellery is little less than marvellous.
PLATE LI
buckles and necklaces
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
Another kind of nineteenth-century ornament, particularly popular in the first half of the century, was hair jewellery. It was favoured possibly in some cases less by inclination than by that necessity which had originally led the way for the use of iron and other less valuable materials. Finger rings, bracelets, necklaces, and watch-chains were plaited of the hair of the departed, brooches and medallions mounted with it, and even ornamental landscapes constructed of strands of human hair. Hair was worn as a gift of affection from the living; but it was chiefly employed for mourning or memorial jewellery. It will be referred to again when mourning jewellery is dealt with.
We enter about the year 1830 into the Romantic period—the days of the heroines of Balzac, the days when Byron and Ossian were à la mode, the days of a fancy chivalry and mediæval sentimentality, of Sir Walter Scott, and above all of the Gothic revival. Gothic motives, rampant in architecture, make their appearance also on bookbindings, furniture, and other things, and influence jewellery to a certain degree. Among the leaders of the movement so far as it affected jewellery were the goldsmiths Froment Meurice, and Robin, whose productions, executed in accordance with the Romantic taste, assumed the form of armoured knights, on foot, or fully equipped on horseback, lords and ladies in mediæval costume, and jewels which took the shape of compositions of a similar "elegant" nature.