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Glittering Stones » Gemstones & Diamond books » Castellani Gems, Jewellery of the Ancients
Castellani Gems, Jewellery of the Ancients
| Book Name |
Jewellery of the Ancients |
| Author |
Castellani |
| published |
1861 |
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A. Castellani states, in his "Memoir on the Jewellery of the Ancients" (1861), that all the jewelry of the Etruscans and Greeks (other than that intended for the grave, and therefore of an unsubstantial character) was made by soldering together and so building up the gold rather than by chiselling or engraving the material.
Ancient work
The Egyptian jewelers employed wire, both to lay down on a background and to plait or otherwise arrange d jour. But, with the exception of chains, it cannot be said that filigree work was much practiced by them. Their strength lay rather in their cloisonnes work and their molded ornaments. Many examples, however, remain of round plaited gold chains of fine wire, such as are still made by the filigree workers of India, and known as trichinopoly chains. From some of these are hung smaller chains of finer wire with minute fishes and other pendants fastened to them.
In ornaments derived from Phoenician sites, such as Cyprus and Sardinia, patterns of gold wire are laid down with great delicacy on a gold ground, but the art was advanced to its highest perfection in the Greek and Etruscan filigree of the 6th to the 3rd centuries BC. |
Refer More Information From Castellani Books
A number of earrings and other personal ornaments found
in central Italy are preserved in the Louvre and in the
British Museum. Almost all of them are made of filigree
work. Some earrings are in the form of flowers of geometric
design, bordered by one or more rims each made up of minute
volutes of gold wire, and this kind of ornament is varied
by slight differences in the way of disposing the number
or arrangement of the volutes. But the feathers and petals
of modern Italian filigree are not seen in these ancient
designs. Instances occur, but only rarely, in which filigree
devices in wire are self-supporting and not applied to
metal plates.
The museum of the Hermitage at Saint Petersburg contains an amazingly
rich collection of jewelry from the tombs of the Crimea. Many bracelets
and necklaces in that collection are made of twisted wire, some in as
many as seven rows of plaiting, with clasps in the shape of heads of animals
of beaten work. Others are strings of large beads of gold, decorated with
volutes, knots and other patterns of wire soldered over the surfaces.
In the British Museum a sceptre, probably that of a Greek priestess, is
covered with plaited and netted gold wipe, finished with a sort of Corinthian
capital and a boss of green glass.
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