Mediæval ornaments of all sorts are forged at the present day upon the Continent to a considerable extent, though less than are those of later times. One important centre of their production is Paris. Another, in earlier years in particular, was Frankfort, where visitors to watering-places on the Rhine have long been the victims of fraudulent vendors. Such mediæval objects, however well supported by a dealer's warranty of place and time of discovery, require, says Mr. King, to be examined by the amateur with a very suspicious and critical eye. Among other personal ornaments of this period that have received attention at the hands of the forger are the leaden badges known as pilgrims' signs. Many ingenious forgeries of the kind were produced about forty-five years ago, and purported to be brought to light by workmen engaged in excavations near the Thames in the City of London. These were in large part the work of two illiterate mud-rakers on the banks of the river; while articles of like kind were shortly afterwards made by two men known as "Billy and Charley," who manufactured a number of curious pendent medals of lead and "cock-metal."[192] The discovery in the Seine, about the same time, of many genuine pilgrims' signs led to the circulation also in France of a quantity of spurious objects of a similar nature.
Renaissance pendants, the prizes of the connoisseur, are favourite subjects for reproduction at the present day, for, unlike the earlier objects, they are not ill-adapted for personal use. Jewellery in the Cinquecento style has for several years past been made in large quantities at Vienna. These jewels are generally not in gold, like the works they profess to imitate, but in silver-gilt, and as a result their enamel is never of fine quality, their general appearance is not up to the standard of the old, and their workmanship is mostly very mechanical. Apart from these and similar works, made also in France and generally sold in jewellers' shops as modern productions, there are others which pretend to age. Though one seldom meets with examples that approach the best productions of the Renaissance, objects of the kind are occasionally imitated with such proficiency, that in collecting specimens of early jewellery in no instances is it necessary to exercise greater caution than in those of the Cinquecento.
Fine jewellery of the eighteenth century, now almost equally sought after—watches, chatelaines, rings, and brooches—has been multiplied in quantities during recent years. As the brooches of this date are very often mounted with rose-cut diamonds, care has been taken to employ stones cut in this manner. Their settings generally distinguish the copies. Again, as M. Eudel points out, when fine old diamond-work has been sent to be reset, the jeweller preserves the old mounts, sets them with modern stones or pastes, and sells them as genuine old work. For the purpose of furthering the deception complete parures purporting to be seventeenth or eighteenth century work are offered for sale in genuine old leather or shagreen cases. A set of jewels may even be made for the special purpose of fitting such a case, or an entirely new case constructed, and treated in such a manner as to give it an appearance of age.
CHAPTER XXXVII
MEMENTO MORI
"I will keep it,
As they keep deaths' heads in rings,
To cry memento to me."
THE study of the various forms of personal ornament by means of which the memory of the dead or of death itself has been preserved by the living is one which offers a wide field for investigation. The Egyptians enforced the precept "Memento Mori" by introducing at their banquets a small coffin containing the image of a corpse which, according to Herodotus, was shown to each guest. In classical times skeletons were rarely represented, though one is sculptured on a tomb at Pompeii.
The warning "Memento Mori" manifested itself in divers fashions in the Middle Ages, the most conspicuous being the famous "Dance of Death," which made its début in the fourteenth century, and was figured by Holbein in the sixteenth. Testimony of the desire of all to keep the warning constantly before the mind is borne by personal ornaments of various kinds displaying emblems of mortality. In order to arrive at the meaning of these crude emblems so often applied to objects of jewellery, regard should be paid to the feelings of the times that gave them birth.