| Fig. 30. |
In fig. 31 illustrations are given of various characteristic specimens of the Renaissance and later forms of jewelry. A crystal cross set in enamelled gold (a) is German work of the 16th century. The pendant reliquary (b), enamelled and jewelled, is of 16th century Italian work, and so probably is the jewel (c) of gold set with diamonds and rubies. The Darnley or Lennox jewel (d), now in the possession of the king, was made about 1576-1577 for Lady Margaret Douglas, countess of Lennox, the mother of Henry Darnley. It is a pendant golden heart set with a heart-shaped sapphire, richly jewelled and enamelled with emblematic figures and devices. It also has Scottish mottoes around and within it. The ear-ring (e) of gold, enamelled, hung with small pearls, is an example of 17th century Russian work, and another (f) is Italian of the same period, being of gold and filigree with enamel, also with pendant pearls. A Spanish ear-ring, of 18th century work (g), is a combination of ribbon, cord and filigree in gold; and another (h) is Flemish, of probably the same period; it is of gold open work set with diamonds in projecting collets. The old French-Normandy pendant cross and locket (l) presents a characteristic example of peasant jewelry; it is of branched open work set with bosses and ridged ornaments of crystal. The ear-ring (j) is French of 17th century, also of gold open work set with crystals. A small pendant locket (k) is of rock crystal, with the cross of Santiago in gold and translucent crimson enamel; it is 16th or 17th century Spanish work. A pretty ear-ring of gold open scroll work (m), set with minute diamonds and three pendant pearls, is Portuguese of 17th century, and another ear-ring (n) of gold circular open work, set also with minute diamonds, is Portuguese work of 18th century. These examples fairly illustrate the general features of the most characteristic jewelry of the dates quoted.
During the 17th and 18th centuries we see only a mechanical kind of excellence, the results of the mere tradition of the workshop—the lingering of the power which when wisely directed had done so much and so well, but now simply living on traditional forms, often combined in a most incongruous fashion. Gorgeous effects were aimed at by massing the gold, and introducing stones elaborately cut in themselves or clustered in groups. Thus diamonds were clustered in rosettes and bouquets; rubies, pearls, emeralds and other coloured special stones were brought together for little other purpose than to get them into a given space in conjunction with a certain quantity of gold. The question was not of design in its relation to use as personal decoration, but of the value which could be got into a given space to produce the most striking effect.
The traditions of Oriental design as they had come down through the various periods quoted, were comparatively lost in the wretched results of the rococo of Louis XIV. and the inanities of what modern revivalists of the Anglo-Dutch call “Queen Anne.” In the London exhibition of 1851, the extravagances of modern jewelry had to stand comparison with the Oriental examples contributed from India. Since then we have learnt more about these works, and have been compelled to acknowledge, in spite of what is sometimes called inferiority of workmanship, how completely the Oriental jeweller understood his work, and with what singular simplicity of method he carried it out. The combinations are always harmonious, the result aimed at is always achieved; and if in attempting to work to European ideas the jeweller failed, this was rather the fault of the forms he had to follow, than due to any want of skill in making the most of a subject in which half the thought and the intended use were foreign to his experience.
A collection of peasant jewelry got together by Castellani for the Paris exhibition of 1867, and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, illustrates in an admirable manner the traditional jewelry and personal ornaments of a wide range of peoples in Europe. This collection, and the additions made to it since its acquisition by the nation, show the forms in which these objects existed over several generations among the peasantry of France (chiefly Normandy), Spain, Portugal, Holland, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, and also show how the forms popular in one country are followed and adopted in another, almost invariably because of their perfect adaptation to the purpose for which they were designed.
Apart from these humbler branches of the subject, in the middle of the 19th century the production of jewelry, regarded as a personal art, and not as a commercial and anonymous industry, was almost extinct. Its revival must be associated with the artistic movement which marked the close of that century, and which found emphatic expression in the Paris international exhibition of 1900. For many years before 1895 this industry, though prosperous from the commercial point of view, and always remarkable from that of technical finish, remained stationary as an art. French jewelry rested on its reputation. The traditions were maintained of either the 17th and 18th centuries or the style affected at the close of the second empire—light pierced work and design borrowed from natural flowers. The last type, introduced by Massin, had exercised, indeed, a revolutionary influence on the treatment of jewelry. This clever artist, not less skilful as a craftsman, produced a new genre by copying the grace and lightness of living blossoms, thus introducing a perfectly fresh element into the limited variety of traditional style, and by the use of filigree gold work altering its character and giving it greater elegance. Massin still held the first rank in the exhibition of 1878; he had a marked influence on his contemporaries, and his name will be remembered in the history of the goldsmith’s art to designate a style and a period. Throughout these years the craft was exclusively devoted to perfection of workmanship. The utmost finish was aimed at in the mounting and setting of gems; jewelry was, in fact, not so much an art as a high-class industry; individual effort and purpose were absent.
| Fig. 31. |
Up to that time precious stones had been of such intrinsic value that the jeweller’s chief skill lay in displaying these costly stones to the best advantage; the mounting was a secondary consideration. The settings were seldom long preserved in their original condition, but in the case of family jewels were renewed with each generation and each change of fashion, a state of things which could not be favourable to any truly artistic development of taste, since the work was doomed, sooner or later, to destruction. However, the evil led to its own remedy. As soon as diamonds fell in value they lost at the same time their overwhelming prestige, and refined taste could give a preference to trinkets which derived their value and character from artistic design. This revolutionized the jeweller’s craft, and revived the simple ornament of gold or silver, which came forward but timidly at first, till, in the Salon of 1895, it burst upon the world in the exhibits of René Lalique, an artist who was further confirmed in his remarkable position by the exhibition of 1900. What specially stamps the works of Lalique is their striking originality. His work may be considered from the point of view of design and from that of execution. As an artist he has completely reconstructed from the foundation the scheme of design which had fed the poverty-stricken imagination of the last generation of goldsmiths. He had recourse to the art of the past, but to the spirit rather than the letter, and to nature for many new elements of design—free double curves, suave or soft; opalescent harmonies of colouring; reminiscences, with quite a new feeling, of Egypt, Chaldea, Greece and the East, or of the art of the Renaissance; and infinite variety of floral forms even of the humblest. He introduces also the female nude in the form of sirens and sphinxes. As a craftsman he has effected a radical change, breaking through old routine, combining all the processes of the goldsmith, the chaser, the enameller and the gem-setter, and freeing himself from the narrow lines in which the art had been confined. He ignores the hierarchy of gems, caring no more on occasion for a diamond than for a flint, since, in his view, no stone, whatever its original estimation, has any value beyond the characteristic expression he lends it as a means to his end. Thus, while he sometimes uses diamonds, rubies, sapphires or emeralds as a background, he will, on the other hand, give a conspicuous position to common stones—carnelian, agate, malachite, jasper, coral, and even materials of no intrinsic value, such as horn. One of his favourite stones is the opal, which lends itself to his arrangements of colour, and which has in consequence become a fashionable stone in French jewelry.
In criticism of the art of Lalique and his school it should be observed that the works of the school are apt to be unsuited to the wear and tear of actual use, and inconveniently eccentric in their details. Moreover, the preciousness of the material is an almost inevitable consideration in the jeweller’s craft, and cannot be set at naught by the artist without violating the canons of his art.