Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/712

678 harmonious, the result aimed at 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 jewellery got together by Castellani for the Paris Exhibition of 1867, and now in the South Kensington Museum, illustrates in an admir able manner the traditional jewellery 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. So far we have gone over the progress and results of the jeweller s art in the past. We have now to speak of the production of jewellery as a modern art industry, in which large numbers of men and women are employed in the larger cities of Europe, but which also has its special localities in which it flourishes, and out of which an im portant national commerce arises. Nearly all the great capitals of Europe produce jewellery, but Paris, Vienna, London, and Birmingham are the most important centres. An illustration of methods and pro cesses and the various kinds of jewellery produced at the present day in tho manufacture as carried on in London and Birmingham will be sufficient for all practical purposes, and as giving an insight into the technique and artistic manipulation of this branch of art industry ; but, by way of contrast, it may be interesting to give in the first place a description of the native working jeweller of Hindustan. Travelling very much after the fashion of a tinker in England, his "budget" contains tools, materials, fire pots, and all the requisites of his handi craft. The gold to 1)3 used is generally supplied by the patron or employer, and is frequently in gold coin, which the travelling jeweller undertakes to convert into the ornaments required. He squats down in the corner of a courtyard, or under cover of a veranda, lights his fire, cuts up the gold pieces entrusted to him, hammers, cuts, shapes, drills, solders with the blow-pipe, files, scrapes, and burnishes until he has produced the desired effect. If he has stones to set or coloured enamels to introduce, he never seems to make a mistake: his instinct for harmony of colour, like that of his brother craftsman the weaver, is as unerring as that of the bird in the construc tion of its nest. Whether the materials are common or rich and raro, he invariably does the very best possible with them, according to native ideas of beauty in design and combination. It is- only when he is interfered with by European dictation that he ever vulgarizes his art or makes a mistake. The result may appear rude in its finish, but the design and the thought are invariably right. We thus see how a trade in the working of which the "plant" is so simple and wants are so readily met could spread itself, as in years past it did at Clerkenwell and at Birmingham, before gigantic factories were in vented for producing everything under the sun. It is impossible to find any date at which the systematic production of jewellery was introduced into England. Probably the Clerkenwell trade dates its origin from the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, as the skilled artisans in the jewellery, clock and watch, and trinket trades appear to have been descendants of the emigrant Huguenots, as the Spitalfields weavers were. The Birmingham trade would appear to have had its origin in the skill to which the workers in fine steel had attained towards the middle and end of last century, a branch of industry which collapsed after the French Revolution. Modern jewellery may be classified under three heads : (1) objects in which gems and stones form the principal portions, and in which the gold work is really only a means for carrying out the design by fixing the gems or stones in the position arranged by the designer, the gold being visible only as a "setting"; (2) when gold work plays an important part in the development of the design, being itself ornamented by engraving or enamelling or both, tho stones and gems being arranged in subordination to the gold work in such positions as to give a decorative effect to the whole ; (3) when gold or other metal is alone used, the design being wrought out by hammering in repousse", casting, engraving, or chasing, or the surfaces left absolutely plain but polished and highly finished. Of course the most ancient and primitive methods arc those wholly dependent upon the craft of the workman ; but gradually various ingenious processes were invented, by which greater accuracy in the portions to be repeated in a design could be produced with certainty and economy : hence the various methods of stamping used in the pro duction of hand-made jewellery, which are in themselves as much mechanical in relation to the end in view as if the whole object were stamped out at a blow, twisted into its proper position as regards the detail, or the various stamped portions fitted into each other for the mechanical completion of the work. It is therefore rather difficult to draw an absolute line between hand-made and machine- made jewellery, except in extreme cases of hand-made, when everything is worked, so to speak, from the solid, or of machine-made, when the hand has only to give the ornament a few touches of a tool, or fit the parts together if of more than one piece. The best and most costly hand-made jewellery produced in England, whether as regards gold work, gems, enamelling, or engraving, is made in London, and chiefly at Clerkenwell. A design is first made on paper, or drawn and coloured, and when needful with separate enlargement of details, everything in short to make the drawing thoroughly intelligible to the working jeweller. According to the nature and purpose of the design, he cuts out, hammers, files, and brings into shape the constructive portions of the work as a basis. Upon this, as each detail is wrought out, he solders, or fixes by rivets, &c., the ornamentation necessary to the effect. The human figure, representations of animal life, leaves, fruit, &c., are modelled in wax", moulded, and cast in gold, to be chased up and finished. As the hammering goes on the metal becomes brittle and hard, and then it is passed through the fire to anneal or soften it, in fact to restore the particles of gold to their original position. In the case of elaborate examples of repousse, after the general forms are beaten up, the interior is filled with a resinous compound, pitch mixed with fire brick dust ; and this, forming a solid but pliable body underneath the metal, allows of the finished details being wrought out on the front of the design, and being finally completed by chasing. When stones are to be set, or when they form the principal portions of the design, the gold has to be wrought by hand so as to receive them in little cup-like orifices, these walls of gold enclosing the stone and allowing the edges to be bent over to secure it. Set ting is never effected by cement in well-made jewelleiy. Machine-made settings have in recent years been made, but these are simply cheap imitations of the true hand made setting. Even strips of gold have been used, serrated at the edges to allow of being easily bent over, for the retention of the stones, true or false.