Why Historical Jewelry?

What can historical jewelry tell us about the past? This huge topic embraces both different cultures and different historical époques dating from prehistory to the start of the 20th century.

From finds from prehistoric graves and caves dating back 25.000 years we know that people since the dawn of time has used ornament made of bone, amber and shells to decorate themselves. But it is from the civilizations like the Sumerian's and Egyptian 7.000 years ago that we learn to connect jewelry with culture. This is because of words and symbols, inscribed in stones, written on papyrus or engravings on precious stones.

So our journey starts with the story told by the ancient rulers of Mesopotania and Egypt and later the rulers and nobles in the Greek and Roman era. This we call the Antique world and antique jewellery refers to finds from the centuries between 3.000 B.C. to about 400 AD.

In Northern Europe we have very little written materials in the era, so it is the countries around the Mediterranean Sea that leave us knowledge about what people thought and believed. In the Bronze Age about 1.700 B.C. until 400 B.C. of the Northern Europe we have very little writings, but the cultures exchanged ideas and trade items with the South and from there we find inspirations in ornaments, coins and weapons. Adopting the believes from the south we see this exemplified in patterns and engraved godlike figures, parades, and animals engraved in precious stones and gold jewellery but our interpretations are only vague.

It gets worse when we come to the times after the Romans. From 400 AD. to about 1000 AD. we talk about the Dark Ages because of the lack of written traditions and trade with the Mediterranean. From 1.000 to 1.400 we have the Middle Ages where hand written European and Arabian scripts is filled with information.

To fill out the gabs jewelry can be one important key to understanding along side with architecture, inscriptions, traditions, everyday artefacts and other archaeological finds. Especially because jewelry mirrors skills that point to the division of labour, wealth, symbols, religion, battles, hierarchy and especially intercultural influences.

The importance of studying historical jewelry stemming from Middle Ages to the 20th century is important because of the same reasons as mentioned above. It is from the design of jewelry that we can see the echoes of Antiquity in the European Renaissance. Italy for example became the principal centre for cameo-carving in the 16th century, exporting work as far as Madrid, London, Vienna and Prague. Both Renaissance Italian and Byzantine jewelry ornaments kept its reference to the past Roman Empire (300 B.C. – 300 AD) and this was along with Greek Philosophy spread with the trade.

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