Jewelry

The instinct for personal adornment led in the earliest times to the use of seeds, berries, shells, pebbles, and teeth for that purpose: and seems to have brought about rapid strides in jewelry. Samsi Vul IV. of As syria (825 B.C.) is known to have worn a cro . The more ancient art of the Egyptians is attested by the objects found in their sarcophagi. They reveal a mastery of hammered, incised, and chased work, of soldering, of the use of gold plates and colored stones. Much has been learned of ancient jewelry from the specimens found (1859) in the coffin of the Egyptian Queen Aah-Hotep, and later in the ruins of Mycenæ discovered by Schliemann. Those of Cyprus and Etruria are equal to the work of any period. The Etruscan granulation of surfaces was long a puzzle until there were discovered in this century gold-workers in the Abruzzi to whom the art had come down as an heirloom. The Me roving i ans and Anglo-Saxons were characterized by their use of slabs of garnet set in gold plates. Celtic orna ments were chiefly of hammered work. Those of the Renai ance were profuse in ornamentation; during the 17th and 18th centuries they were of conventional designs aiming chiefly at a gorgeous ma ing of gold and jewels. Enormous bownots, stomachers, etc., were made in France during the reigns of Louis XIV., Louis XV., and Louis XVI. In the 19th century greater quantities have been manufactured, London, Paris, and New York being the leading centers of the trade. In 1890 there were in the United States 783 firms, capitalized at $22,246,508, employing 15,761 people and producing that year articles valued at $34,761,458. Paris annually sells more than 100,000,000 francs worth of jewelry.