JEWELS and the WOMAN

by Marianne OSTIER

JEWELS and the WOMAN

The Romance, Magic and Art of Feminine Adornment

HORIZON PRESS New York

Note: For centuries it has been the custom for jewelers to identify their designs by stamping their hallmark on jewels. The reproduction on page 20 is of Marianne Ostier’s hallmark. Unless otherwise noted in the captions, jewels here reproduced have been designed by Marianne Ostier. All jewels are illustrated in actual size, with the exception of the portraits and Illustration 17.

Credits and Acknowledgments: The author wishes to thank all the people who have given time, information and encouragement to the work on this book. Particular thanks are due Mr. George D. Skinner of N. W. Ayer & Son Inc. for supplying invaluable information; Miss Dorothy Dignam, of the same firm, for her inspiring enthusiasm and knowledge; Mr. Lansford F. King, publisher of the Jewelers’ Circular Keystone, for his endless confidence in the work which made the completion of this book possible; and Mr. Albert E. Haase, president of the Jewelry Industry Council, for the many helpful facts from his special fund of knowledge.

For contributing to the visual quality of this book, grateful acknowledgment is made to the Jewelry Industry Council for the frontispiece colorplates; The Metropolitan Museum of Art for Illustrations 1 through 8; the British Information Service for Illustrations 11, 12 and 15; and Trude Fleischmann for Illustrations 28 and 29.

©1958 by Marianne Ostier

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 58-10224

Manufactured in the United States of America

All original designs as well as the text by Marianne Ostier are protected by copyright and may not be copied or reproduced without permission in writing from the author and publisher.

THE BIRTHSTONES

Contents

List of Illustrations

Foreword

“Diamonds,” the song goes, “are a girl’s best friend.” Take special note of the sex; it is significant. For only among humans has the female increasingly become the adorned sex. The mane of the lion or of the stallion gives the male a magnificence beyond the competence of the lioness or the mare. It is the peacock that spreads the studded glory of its tail—not the peahen. As among the birds and beasts, so primitive man was the resplendent sex, while his mate went about her task, in more subdued and humble tones. By the time of the Renaissance—it took that long in civilization’s climb—men and women were about equal in their adornment. In Europe, indeed, only men wore diamonds until 1444, when King Charles VII of France (whom Joan of Arc had placed upon the throne) was captivated by Agnes Sorel’s beauty and daring, when she appeared in a superb necklace of diamonds. The diamond at once became the prized gem of womankind.

The costumes and jewels of the courtiers of Elizabeth I of England were surpassed by those of the Queen only in the measure of her superior station. Since then, however, the attire of men has grown increasingly functional, sedate, and commonplace, while that of women has retained its freedom of color and flow. And the great world of jewelry is preeminently the woman’s domain.

Scientists in several fields have sought the reasons for this change; we may rest content with the fact. A man may be thought distinguished, or perhaps handsome; only a woman may be called beautiful. And by proper adornment of apparel and jewelry, every woman seeks to enhance her beauty.

Certain austere sects frown upon “artificial” aids to beauty. In the hills of Pennsylvania are honest women whose lips and cheeks have never been touched by added color. But such persons are outside the main path of human progress. For the quest of beauty—surely a legitimate and a desirable quest—has taken the same path as the other great adventures of man, which have placed him supreme among all living creatures.

Look at the problem of security. The bear can strike a tremendous blow with his paw. The tiger springs with fierce gash of fang and claw. The eagle pounces with deadly talon and beak. Beside these, how puny the fist of man! But the bear, the tiger, the eagle remain with but these weapons, while man closed his tiny hand around a club, then hurled a spear, then winged his bow with arrows, shot forth his bullets and his bombs. While the animals mark a dead end of evolution, man continued to evolve by “artificial” extensions of his powers.

The same is true in every field. The news of the victory of Marathon was borne by a runner, who coursed the twenty-four miles, gasped out his word of triumph, and dropped dead. Since then man has harnessed the ox, mounted the horse, and surpassed all other creatures in means of travel upon and within the waters, across the earth, high and higher in the air.

So in the realm of beauty. First man painted his naked body. Then he adorned himself with claws and teeth torn from the animals, with feathers plucked from the birds. Soon he discovered the sheen of precious metals, the sparkle of gems. The progress of adornment, from ancient Egypt to the twentieth century world, has been marked by the further discovery and refinement of metals and the design of jewels. Synthetic gems and costume jewelry have given to every woman opportunities once limited to the wealthy few; the principles applicable to the wearing of costly jewels are the same for their less expensive cousins. And the pattern of the quest of personal beauty is in line with the general pattern of human evolution.

Although we have approached beauty through these somewhat solemn reflections, we must not forget that the best reflection of beauty is in the admiring eye of the beholder. It is a mutual pleasure; but it is a personal, an individual task. For it is every woman’s duty—not merely to herself but to those around—to present her fairest aspect to the world.

To the old remark: Love is blind, the cynic has added: But marriage is an eye-opener. Of course, neither statement is true. While love may fasten upon and prize other qualities, the lover is usually keenly aware of the measure of his beloved’s beauty. He takes increasing pride and pleasure as she finds fresh ways of enhancing her natural gifts. There is a lesson hidden in the statement that if a woman is beautiful at fifteen she may thank God, but if she is beautiful at fifty she has herself to thank. The lesson is that a woman can learn what is seemly, what is becoming, what adds to her beauty.

One may look at precious stones and magnificent jewels ranged in a museum or in a store. When they are being worn, we look not so much at them as at the ensemble they help to create of a live alluring woman. The Crown Jewels in the Tower of London are imposing. When they are worn on occasions of state, the court regalia combine to keep them imposing still: it is less a person than a position that they adorn. But with the rest of us mortals, as even with queens in less stately hours, the jewels must fit the person and the personality, as well as the occasion.

What looks most attractive against the dark velvet on a counter may fail to harmonize with golden glinting hair. The size of the earlobe, the figure of the woman, the color of the dress, the activity of the evening, all are factors in determining which jewels one should wear. Jewels have a long history, but always an immediate test of use. In both aspects, they hold an ever present allure.

MARIANNE OSTIER

PART ONE

Jewels:
History, Character, Magic

CHAPTER 1
The Story of Jewels

The Earliest Uses

There are as many guesses about the origin of adornment as about the origin of language. The most popular theories might be called the functional, the magical, and the aesthetic.

When man first felt cold, says the functional theory—or when he first felt shame and hid his shame with the fig leaf—he had to find some way of fastening his garments. The leaves, the furs, the hides, would slip off unless adequately held together, especially when the man was running in swift hunt, or the woman bending under domestic burdens. The first fastenings were probably strands of vinestalks, lashes of interlaced leaves. Then pins made of long thorns, of wood, or of the bones of animals came into use. Pins of the last sort have been found in prehistoric caves. Naturally, iron, bronze, silver and gold pins followed, as the use of these metals became known. Crude safety pins, in form essentially the same as those we use today, have been unearthed in the most ancient tombs.

The transition from bone to metal may be observed in the word fibula, the early Latin word for a clasp. For the long outer leg bone is also called the fibula, and it looks like the tongue of a clasp, for which the other bone, the tibia, is the holder. And the word fibula comes from the Latin verb fivere, meaning to fasten.

On even the earliest pins, however, and especially on the domed backs of safety pins and clasps, there are curious carvings of dots and circles and other forms, which give scope to the second theory of the origin of adornment, the magical. For along with these fasteners are found necklaces of beads and other adornments that served no practical end—except the very important purpose of placating the gods, of warding off evil.

The telling of rosary beads, widespread today in Moslem as in Catholic lands, is a milder modern aid to prayer; in primitive times the need for protection was no less frequent and more desperate. Those of us who carry a rabbit’s foot or other charm, who put an amulet in our automobile to help us drive safely, who still “knock wood” to keep away mischance, need not smile at our far-off ancestors who engraved their beads with potent symbols or wore a scarab, preferably carved of precious stone, to keep all ills away. Charms and amulets were on every neck and arm. The devils were all about; they whirled in the tempest; they sprang suddenly in the form of a wild beast; they twisted one’s ankle as a jungle vine. And every stone-age child knew that the agate protected one against thunder and against tiger bite. If the agate was ringed like an eye, especially a tiger’s eye, it could outstare and drive away the fiercest fiend. To turn away the fangs of the venomous hidden snake, what better charm than lapis lazuli? Thus each of the colored stones known to the ancients had its special powers, or could be carved with symbols and signs of might—and jewels were worn to ward off all misfortune. Even among the ancient Greeks, it was recognized that (as the slave in Aristophanes’ play Plutus observes) there is no amulet that can save one from “the bite of a sycophant.”

The third theory of the origin of adornment, the aesthetic, declares that man is born with a love of beauty. There is no question—and if there were, modern research has answered it—that the bright trinket attracts the babe. When one is happy one wants to sing; when one sees beauty, one wants to experience it with the gift of sight or, if it is tangible, to put it on. And ever to increase earth’s store of beauty. We cannot snare a sunrise, but we can make a garland of spring flowers. Even before he fashioned beads, primitive man adorned himself with necklaces of shells, of bears’ claws, stags’ teeth—probably also of many colored berries, but these have crumbled in the caves. Such findings are so widespread that Carlyle declared: “The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is decoration.”

Since the question of origins is buried in surmise, it seems fair to follow that eminent advocate of the middle way, Sir Roger de Coverley, and allow that there is something to be said for all three theories. Each impulse, to hold up clothing, to ward off evil, to enjoy beauty—power, protection, pleasure—may have had a share in the birth of adornment. It is true that there are paintings and statues, in the early tombs, of women clad only in their jewels. But while queens, and the concubines of kings might be thus untrammeled in their quest of beauty, humbler folk at work needed workaday attire. And always the magicians, the medicine men, then the priests, wove their holy spells, with mitre and chalice and ring inscribed with the secret words of power. A monarch of early times was an impressive sight, as not only his rings, his armlets and neckpiece, but his breastplate, the buckle of his belt, and the hilt of his sword were carved with sacred symbols and crusted with precious stones. Here were protection, power, and grandeur intertwined.

Perhaps the earliest jewelry to which we can attach an owner’s name was in the find unearthed in 1901 by Flinders Petrie in the royal tombs at Abydos. It is a bracelet of golden hawks, rising from alternate blocks of turquoise and gold, and it belonged to the Egyptian Queen of Zer back in 5400 B.C. Somewhat later lived the Princess Knumit, whose mummy was adorned with all manner of jewels, anklets, bracelets, armlets, headbands, including a serpent necklace of beads of gold, silver, carnelian, lapis lazuli, and emerald, and hieroglyphics wrought in gold with inlaid gems. From Chaldea, as early as 3000 B.C., we have beads, and jewelry of lapis lazuli, and headdresses of finely beaten gold.

Egypt and the Near East

A panel in one of the pyramids gives us a realistic picture of the interior of a jeweler’s shop of long ago. The master craftsman, his bookkeeper, his workers and his apprentices are all busy at their tasks. We see them selecting, cutting, grinding, firing, shaping, setting, polishing, with tools that have changed little in 3000 years. The jewels we know today are all present there: diadems, earrings, brooches, bracelets, rings, girdles, anklets. The necklace seems to have been, in most cases, a wide tight band, almost a collar; on many a mummy such a “choker” has been preserved, studded with jewels, the gold between often in the shape of a falcon, or a lotus, or a sphinx. Favorite among the designs, of course, was the scarab; in the mummy itself, a scarab was inserted to take the place of the heart.

Two ornaments common in ancient Egypt are not found in use today. One is the pectoral, a great bejeweled breastpiece, usually hung from the neck. The other is the golden wig cover. The great men and women of the eighteenth century B.C. wore long black wigs (in contrast to the great men of the eighteenth century A.D.; George Washington’s inaugural wig, was, of course, powdered white). Close-fitting over these black wigs were joined rows of gold bands or medallions, beaten fine, fastened together, forming a complete cover that reached to the shoulders. The bands bore hieroglyphics, the medallions were usually shaped like heads of man or beast. One other difference from later times: for the snuffbox of the eighteenth century A.D., or the cigarette lighter of the twentieth, society folk in ancient Egypt carried a perfume box.

The Egyptians had many rings, including signet rings. These were intaglios; that is, the design was cut into, hollowed out of, the metal or stone, so that when the ring was pressed on clay or wax it would leave a raised design like a cameo. The design might be a god, or a sacred animal such as a scarab or a sphinx, usually with an indication of the identity of the owner. Thus the King’s seal, and especially the King’s signet ring if borne by a messenger, carried the royal authority. Jezebel, wife of Ahab, King of the Israelites, used the seal of her royal spouse on the letters she wrote to destroy Naboth, whose vineyard they coveted.

The Israelites, indeed, wore rings on their fingers, in their nostrils, in their ears, and we are told that when they walked there was a tinkling about their feet. They also wore a gem pressed into the soft side of the nostril, a favorite spot for display through the Near East, still adorned by a gem among the Bedouins and the Hindus of today. The Israelites gave of these jewels in great quantity to adorn the Tabernacle that was built in the wilderness—and also for the making of the Golden Calf.

Legend has it that Solomon’s wisdom emanated from a magic ring. One day he carelessly left this ring behind him at the bath, and with the water of his bath it was thrown into the sea. Solomon retained enough wisdom to suspend his legal court for forty days, after which the ring came back to him in the stomach of a fish served at his table. A similar story of a jewel returned in the belly of a fish is told by Polycrates, tyrant of Samos in 530 B.C. Like stories occur in The Thousand and One Nights; and the coat of arms of the city of Glasgow contains a salmon with a ring in its mouth, memorializing the occasion when St. Kentigern from the fish’s mouth restored to an early queen her ring and her reputation.

Oriental tales have many accounts of magic rings. One of the most elaborate deals with Gyges, a Lydian noble to whom King Candaules, proud of the possession of a beautiful wife, displayed her in her undraped beauty. The resourceful Gyges descended into a chasm of the earth, where he found a brazen horse with a human carcass in its belly. From the body Gyges took a ring which, when he turned the stone inward, made him invisible. Thus fortified, Gyges entered the palace and murdered the king. The widow, Nyssia, married him; he reigned thirty-eight years, from 716 to 678 B.C., with the help of the ring becoming so powerful and so rich that men spoke proverbially of “the wealth of Gyges.”

Another ring, as remembered by Chaucer in The Squire’s Tale, gave a man the power to understand the language of the birds. The reader may remember that the messenger between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba was a bird that whispered in their ears. We gather such stories from early days literally through a fabulous thousand and one nights.

Although jewelry was a preeminent concern of the Egyptians, because they must be adorned not only in this world but in the next, it was a lively preoccupation throughout the Near East, the cradle of civilization. Babylonian and Assyrian tombs yield treasures in splendidly mounted jewels. A description of the goddess Ishtar, descending through the Seven Gates to the ultimate world, pictures her at each gate putting aside a separate jewel, finger rings, toe rings, necklace, earrings, armlet, brooch, girdle: she passes through the final gate in unadorned beauty.

Among the jewels of ancient Persia, from the fourth century B.C., is a great necklace of three rows of pearls, almost 500 pearls in all, half of them still well preserved across the flight of twenty-five centuries.

Westward to the Greeks

There exist some examples of Greek art in early times. A gold and silver brooch in the form of a flower may have been shaped about 1400 B.C. Perhaps 500 years later, by the time of the Trojan War, there were inlays, intaglios, even small plaques of gold with hooks to fit the ear. In the fifth century, when the great dramatists filled the theatres, Greek lapidaries were making filigree and enamels of fruit and flowers—a bit later, of the fair feminine form. By this time, too, the Greeks were copying the designs they saw on, or bought from, Egyptian and Phoenician traders; the sphinx and the scarab appear in Hellenic workmanship.

Originators are held by their new problems to a sort of modesty in design. Imitators often—striving to outdo—overdo. The Greeks grew far more elaborate than their predecessors. The great Greek sculptors were delighted with the human figure which posed sufficient problems, either bare or simply draped. But outside of statuary, and after the great fifth and fourth centuries, the wealthy Greeks in their ways of life had caught the fever of display. Their jewelry must surpass that of the eastern barbarians to whom they were bringing the benefits of Greek culture. From every medallion of a necklace, for example, might hang a pendant. And this pendant might be a tiny golden vase, which contained perfume—each vase a different fragrance—or which might open to reveal a series of figures—as, later, baroque rosary beads opened to reveal, in minute carving, episodes in the life of the Virgin Mary.

A portrait of Alexander the Great was a favorite figure, in many materials and forms. Although Alexander gave one artist exclusive right to reproduce his likeness after his death, as this monopoly lapsed there was a boom on “good luck” jeweled representations of the man who wept because there were no more worlds for him to conquer.

The Greeks did not ape all the antics of the Phoenicians, some of whose high-born ladies pierced the entire rim of their ears, as well as the lobe, each jewel in its eyelet supporting a pendant stone. The Greeks used but one ornament per ear; but these grew larger and larger, more and more weighted with metal and studded with jewels, and so were finally worn suspended from a diadem or a cloth band.

Alexander’s conquests having taken the Greeks into farther lands and introduced them to unsuspected splendors of the Orient, they carried home gems that before had been unfamiliar to them: the topaz, the amethyst, the aquamarine.

Etruscan Achievements

In Italy, meanwhile, the Etruscans had brought the work of the goldsmith and the lapidary to a high peak of artistry. They developed the swivel ring, in which the mounted gem or special charm might be turned about, so that any face of it could be displayed. Thus the carvings on the belly of a scarab became as important as the design on its back.

The Etruscans also made circular or oval bands of earrings and necklaces, within which a pendant might hang free, a gently swinging precious stone or golden charm. From their necklaces often hung a hollow pendant, in which an amulet might be placed. They made many headpieces, bands, wreaths, and pins of beaten or granulated gold.

Especially deft was the work of the Etruscans in granulated gold. Onto a metal surface they soldered tiny specks of gold, almost as fine as powder, producing the effect of a rich grain. The artistry of the Etruscan work was so superb that when it was recovered during the Renaissance, Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), the greatest goldsmith of his time, despaired of making successful copies of the Etruscan pieces and decided to shape designs of his own devising, “inferior as they may be.”

The Roman Conquest

The whole Etruscan civilization gave way before the splendor that was Rome. Home from their conquests the Romans brought great stores of jewels, treasures of the Orient. Before the crowding and gaping throngs of the imperial city, the “triumphs” of their rulers marched for hours through the streets of Rome, while foreign potentates pulled chariots bearing their conquerors and carts with the loot of their palaces. At Pompey’s third triumph, in addition to countless gold and silver cases bestudded with gems, there were three dining-couches adorned with pearls, and a great chessboard, three feet by four, wrought of two precious stones, with a golden moon, weighing thirty pounds.

The Romans also brought home artisans, metal workers and jewelers, from whom after a time the natives learned their craft. Again we find the victors trying to outdo the vanquished whom they naturally despised. The adornments of men and women grew more and more massive. Women’s hairpins were eight and ten inches long. Rings were worn upon every finger. Great thumb rings were set with jewels or made of gold in various designs, especially the heads of animals. Some of the bands of gold were very large but hollow; down the ages echo complaints that, in accident or brawl, a golden ring was crushed. The wealthy, of course, insisted on rings of solid gold. These became so heavy that some had to be worn in cold weather only, lighter ones being designed for summer wear. A specialty among the patricians came to be the key ring, a golden band with the key devised to lie flat along the finger, thus keeping with the master the safety of his treasures. Often a large iron key ring was worn by the chief steward of an estate; this opened the strongbox, which might hold the dinner plate and other daily valuables, and within a recess of which nestled the treasure chest of the golden key.

So great was the jeweled extravagance of the late Republic that Cato the Censor (234-149 B.C.) sought by legislation to limit the amount of jewelry one might wear. He also restricted the use of metal in rings, assigning iron, silver, or gold according to rank. Gold was reserved for the official ring of the Senator, which he himself might wear only when on duty. Naturally such restrictions could not be binding for long. Censorship usually produces an exaggeration of what it has tried to curb. In the early days of the Empire everyone worth his salt manifested his worth with adornments.

The citizens favored bright colors in their jewels: reds, yellows, blues. The drivers at the chariot races wore different colors; spectators bet on the red, the yellow, or the blue, and many a precious stone changed hands according to the speed of the horses and the drivers’ skill. If a lapidary could not secure precious stones large enough, or in quantities to meet the ever increasing demand, he made imitations of colored glass. Although Pliny cried out against the practice of making false gems, the usual purchaser had few tests to show when he was cheated.

1. GREEK EARRINGS, 5TH CENTURY B.C. Wrought in gold, these ancient loops end in lions’ heads. (Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

2. CYPRIOTE PENDANT, 8TH CENTURY B.C. This gold pendant with chains is an excellent example of the simple beauty found in the jewelry of ancient Cyprus. (Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

3. EARLY 18TH CENTURY ITALIAN BROOCH. (Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

4. EGYPTIAN BRACELET, 4TH CENTURY B.C. “Costume jewelry” from the Ptolemaic Period. (Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

5. ETRUSCAN RING. This handsome gold ring is set with a banded agate which has been engraved with a satyr and a goat. (Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

6. 18TH CENTURY ITALIAN RING. The seal on this silver ring is probably an effigy of one of the popes. The plaques represent St. George and the dragon, and the crest of Pope Clement XII. (Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

7. CYPRIOTE RING. Ancient gold worked in a spiral to produce an unusual piece of jewelry. (Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

8. ROMAN WREATH, 3RD CENTURY B.C. The expert craftsmanship of Roman metalwork can be seen in this gold wreath of ivy leaves. (Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

9. INSIDE VIEW OF THE FAMOUS OLD TIFFANY STORE, NEW YORK, 1875.

10. THE CROWNING OF A QUEEN. Queen Mary wears four of the magnificent gems cut from the Cullinan, the biggest diamond ever mined. On her bodice, pinned to the ribbon of the Order of the Garter, is the 317-carat Cullinan II with the 530-carat Great Star of Africa below it. These two gems normally are in the State crown and the Scepter respectively. At the base of her diamond collar are the Cullinan IV, a cushion-cut diamond of 64 carats and the Cullinan III, a pearshape-cut diamond of 95 carats.

11, 12. THE BRITISH CROWN JEWELS. Left: The Crown of England, known as St. Edward’s Crown because it was copied, in the time of Charles II, from the ancient crown worn by Edward the Confessor, has been used by many of England’s monarchs for their coronation. Right: The Imperial State Crown is worn by the reigning monarch on all State occasions. Made in 1838, it embodies many historical gems, including the Black Prince’s Ruby, a sapphire from the ring of Edward the Confessor and the second Star of Africa. In all, the crown contains 2,783 diamonds, 277 pearls, 17 sapphires, 11 emeralds and five rubies. (Courtesy of the British Information Services)

13. REMODELLING THE IMPERIAL STATE CROWN. Remodelling work in progress at the Goldsmiths & Silversmiths Company in London.

14. EMPRESS ELISABETH OF AUSTRIA. This portrait of one of the beauties of 19th century Europe shows the young Empress wearing hair ornaments of diamond stars which have quivering centers.

The Vogue of the Pearl

The notorious pearl-drinking dare of Cleopatra caught the fancy of the Romans. The serpent of the Nile dissolved a union (the Roman word for pearl was unionem, in this case truly symbolic) worth half a million dollars, and drank it as a pledge to her Antony. Cleopatra killed herself rather than walk in the triumph of Emperor Augustus, but the Emperor’s favorite, Agrippa, we are told, secured the mate to Cleopatra’s pearl. She had this great pearl halved, for the ears of the statue of Venus in the Pantheon.

The vogue of the pearl swept over Rome. This “disease of the oyster,” with its blush of rainbow colors over white, with its tint of beauty and its hint of underwater mystery, had indeed always been regarded as the queen of jewels. The Romans affected it to the degree of vulgar display. The historian Pliny (23-79 A.D.), who railed upon many customs of the time, commented on Pompey’s having a portrait of himself made in pearls and borne by slaves in his triumph. “Unworthy!” cried the satirist, “and a presage of the anger of the gods.” Pliny also recorded that a young bride was “covered from head to foot with pearls and emeralds.” He waxed indignant at the fact that women had pearls set in their shoes. But so did the Emperor Caligula, while the Emperor Nero, fond of the theatre, had pearls adorn his favorite players’ masks.

Not to be outdone by an Egyptian, Clodius—whose father was a favorite tragic actor—invited a great company to a feast; he dissolved and drank a large pearl, said that he enjoyed the flavor, and fed a similar gem to every guest.

Roman Luxury

The vogue of the pearl did not bring about the neglect of other gems. The Senator Nonius owned a great opal, valued at two million sesterces, approximately $150,000. The Emperor Augustus coveted the stone; rather than yield it to him, Nonius withdrew into exile.

Lollia Paulina, wife of the Emperor Caligula, possessed a great chain of emeralds and pearls worth over two million dollars.

It is significant of the change in Roman ways that when the Emperor Tiberius once more tried to limit the wearing of gold rings, he based his restrictions not on rank but on riches. Only those citizens might wear rings of gold, he ordained in 22 A.D., whose fathers and grandfathers held property valued at 400,000 sesterces, $30,000. Jewels, always the property, were thus also made the prerogative of the hereditary rich.

The Tide Turns East

Back from Rome toward the East, with Constantine in 330 A.D., went the flowering fashions, to riot in Byzantine luxury. The Eastern capital exceeded the declining city of the West—abandoned to the barbarians and the popes—in extravagance, in colorful splendor and elaborate intricacy of design. Gems, no longer reserved for the showy jewels, were sewn upon or woven into the very texture of garments. In all this profusion, the crafts of the goldsmith and the lapidary continued to thrive, while the West lapsed into the dun rigor of the Dark Ages.

Eastward to India

More or less independently of the western world, the making of fine jewels flourished in the Far East. In India the code of Manu, about 250 B.C., prescribed fines for poor workmanship and for the debasing of gold. A drama of the same period describes a workshop, with pearls and emeralds, and artisans to grind lapis lazuli, to cut shells, to pierce coral, and to make the filigree and other ornaments that have persisted in that part of the world unchanged to our day.

The lavishness of Oriental potentates is proverbial; their collections of precious stones and elaborate jewels have been as fabulous as their incalculable wealth. Almost to our own generation birthday gifts to maharajahs have matched the monarch’s weight in gold or precious stones. At the greatest period of Indian art, during the reign of the Mogul Shah Jehan, who died in 1666, the art of jewelry almost merged with that of architecture. In addition to the celebrated Peacock Throne, the Shah built the Great Mosque at Delhi, and at Agra the Pearl Mosque and that triumph of beauty, the Taj Mahal. This was erected as a mausoleum for his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahall, who was called “the adornment of the palace.”

In addition to the designs and patterns of tile that are a feature of the mosques, the Taj Mahal is adorned with great treasures of the East: “jasper from the Punjab, carnelians from Broach, turquoises from Tibet, agates from Yemen, lapis lazuli from Ceylon, coral from Arabia, garnets from Bundelcund, diamonds from Punnah, rock crystal from Malwar, onyx from Persia, chalcedony from Asia Minor, sapphires from Colombo.” It took thirteen years, from 1632 to 1645, to collect these treasures and construct the mausoleum. The memory of a woman may be buried there, but a beauty beyond description is preserved.

Over the Chinese Wall

Still farther east, in China, a more restrained and delicate beauty was developed. Piety and filial devotion taught the Chinese to limit their display. They cultivated the economy of good taste. The world’s largest known emerald, found in China, was carved into the figure of Kwan Yin, goddess of mercy. Jewels were not worn indiscriminately; they served not only to adorn but to signify station. A mandarin of the first rank wore ruby or red tourmaline; a mandarin of the second, coral or garnet; of the third, beryl or lapis lazuli; of the fourth, rock crystal; and of the fifth, other stones of white.

Beyond all other stones the Chinese prized “the divine stone,” jade. While this occurs in various shades, even of blue, of red, of brown, it was, and still is, especially sought in ivory white and in the shades of green, from light apple to the dark “imperial jade.” This was, legend whispered, a crystallization of the spirit of the sea. Its possession conferred longevity, man’s prolonged moment in the eternity of the gods.

A perfect piece of jade is left uncarved. As a pendant, brooch, or ring, it stands alone, in simple beauty. A cultured Chinese was likely to have one with him unmounted, just the stone, to cherish it and finger it and feel its silken surface. There were experts who could tell the quality, the very color, of a piece of jade, without looking at it, just from the feel.

Treasured through the centuries in China, jade has come to be prized in the West as well. The Emperor Kuang-hou sent Queen Victoria, for her Jubilee, a sceptre of jade. The deep green of the richest jade, the divine stone, makes it a fit companion for the diamond, the monarch of gems.

Dark Age of the Diamond

The diamond was not mentioned, in this summary narrative, until the description of the Taj Mahal. This greatest of precious stones—hardest of gems, and the only one that consists of a single element—was little known in the ancient world, and but slowly won appreciation in the West. At the height of the Renaissance, Cellini in 1568 set down the values of the precious stones, of flawless stones one carat in weight. A ruby of such specifications was worth 800 gold crowns; an emerald, 400; a diamond, but 100. (The more common sapphire was a far fourth, at ten gold crowns a carat.)

The Dark Ages in southern Europe were not especially bright with gems. Individual rulers made some display, on crown, on hilt of sword, and ecclesiastical splendor was slowly gathering, along with decorated frames and representations of the Virgin Mary. On the other hand, the medieval Church frowned upon unseemly extravagance of display, and some monarchs, even Charlemagne when he doffed his rich crown of state, were sober and plain in their attire.

Tribes to the North

In the more northerly lands, and among the tribes that in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries pressed upon and twice overran Rome, there was meanwhile more than a crude attempt at jeweled adornment. The Ostrogoths made some magnificent brooches, mainly with animal designs. The Visigoths were fond of garnets, often set on a background of cloisonné. Their crowns and coronets were elaborately wrought; one of these, belonging to the Spanish-Gothic King Reccesvinthus (649-672) was given as a votive offering to the church of Santa Maria near Toledo.

The warlike and otherwise austere Franks took pride in their jeweled buckles. Their brooches were circular, or formed in the shape of birds. In Belgium, in the Fifth century, there was considerable carving of chips, a practice that migrated to Scandinavia. In Sweden there was also an abundance of circular pendants, beaten of thin gold, and decorated with animals.

The Celts and the Emerald Isle

Among the Celtic peoples were found armlets and fibulas, the latter not so short in the arch, nor so exquisite, as the Greek pins, nor yet so long and heavy as the Roman. The Celts had large, crescent-shaped head ornaments, attached near the ears and standing straight up on either side like the horned moon. They made heavy gold torques, necklaces of twisted metal usually tight as a collar. Some of the torques, especially those in Ireland, were much longer and hung down in massive twists across the chest. Ireland is called “the Emerald Isle” not from any pride in its deep green verdure, but from the ring sent by Pope Adrian to Henry II of England in 1170, a ring set with an emerald, for the King’s investiture with the dominion of Ireland.

The Scotch, because of the way they wore their plaid, grew to have exceptionally splendid brooches. A fine one of these, preserved in the British Museum, is known as the Loch Buy brooch; it is of rock crystal cut in a convex mound, in a circle of ten projecting turrets each topped with a pearl. A noteworthy brooch design is that of the pin with arms: a straight bar down the center, enclosed in two arcs of a circle of beaten gold.

Although most of their gold designs were hammered down into the metal, the early Celts also grew expert in répoussé, a process in which, on a thin sheet of metal, the design is hammered upward from underneath.

The Anglo-Saxons

Among the Anglo-Saxons, especially those that settled in Kent, a greater variety was manifest. They made beads in many shapes and shades of glass and amber. They were fond of the amethyst set in pure gold. They adorned their hair with pins tipped with figures of animals and fantastic birds. They took great pains with the art of enamel, which they fashioned cloisonné.

Jewels in English History

The finest known piece of Anglo-Saxon days is the Alfred Jewel, a gold plaque of cloisonné enamel found in 1693 at Newton Park. It is an oval two inches long, a little over an inch high, and an inch deep. At the tip of the oval is a boar’s head. Rock crystal covers the main plaque of translucent enamel, blue, white, green, and brown, shaped in the head of a man. Some think this may represent a saint, or the Christ; some say it is a portrait of Alfred the Great, for along the edge in gold are the letters: Aelfred mec heht gewyrcan, “Alfred had me worked.”

Among other treasures of early England are examples of filigree, such as a Kentish brooch set with garnets, of the sixth century, and brooches of granular gold.

Edward the Confessor’s Jewels

One of the three Royal Crowns of the British monarch is supposedly that of Edward the Confessor, who was buried in Westminster in 1101, but whose shrine was opened and the jewels taken forth for future kings. The royal treasures of the English realm, however, were broken up by the Roundheads under Cromwell.

Life at its longest is fleeting, but beauty is an enduring symbol: the destroyers of the royal treasure are scorned today almost more than the regicides. The current Crown of Edward the Confessor, therefore, is a replica, even if the old one was authentic. Less suspect is the great sapphire, which Edward wore in his coronation ring, and which today is the central stone in the cross atop the British Imperial Crown of State.

Growth of the Goldsmiths’ Guild

Less than a century after Edward, in the reign of Henry II, the first Plantagenet ruler of England, the Goldsmiths’ Guild was formed. By 1380, two hundred years later, it was one of the most powerful guilds in the country, with rigid rules for admittance and for the quality of materials and workmanship. Although the artists worked for the king and the nobles, the bulk of their production was for ecclesiastical and general religious use. As a result, they developed greater refinements and further elaborations in this field. We have already noticed the rosary beads that open, disclosing scenes of the life of Christ or the Virgin Mary. But a cardinal without succumbing to the sin of pride might wear a jeweled pendant if the hanging box of gold opened upon a crucifix, or adorn his robe with a rich chain of gold if its links were medallions designed with holy scenes. Cardinal Wolsey, whose kitchen boasted twenty-two specialty chefs, vied with his lusty monarch, Henry VIII, in many ways, but he could never hope to match the King’s jewels which included almost 250 rings, well over 300 brooches, and one of whose diamonds, an observer reports, was bigger than “the largest walnut I ever saw.”

The Italians in the Renaissance

The Italian Renaissance started earlier than and outshone the English. The great jewel collections of ancient times, of the Emperors Julius Caesar and Hadrian of Maecenas were dwarfed by the collections of the Medici and the Borgias. The styles favored in those days are still vivid in the portraits of the period. Many of the painters and sculptors, indeed—Donatello (1386-1466), Pollaiuolo (1429-1498), Botticelli (1444-1510), Cellini, to name but four—began their careers as goldsmiths and jewelers. They fashioned works with painstaking devotion and venturesome skill for their generous but exacting patrons.

Lorenzo de Medici collected the antique cameos and intaglios freshly unearthed in Italian soil; under the spur of his interest, intaglio jewels achieved a new delicacy. Metal was worked with greater deftness, flat, chased, or répoussé. Faience, the art of painting and glazing ceramics, was added to the colorful arts of enameling.

Enseignes became popular, badges of dignity in the form of a gold adornment on a man’s hat, with the nobleman’s crest or other identification caught into the design. All over the continent, and even among the Italianate Englishmen of Elizabeth’s court and James’, the enseigne was worn as a clasp to hold the plume, while from one ear beneath dangled a golden ring or a pear-shaped pearl.

Rings of all sorts were again in demand, especially signet rings, fede (clasped hands) friendship rings, gimmals or gemmels (twin rings that could be separated for two lovers to wear)—and poison rings.

Particularly popular was the pendant, in many forms and positions. Pendant earrings again grew, until almost too large to wear. Even larger pendants, many opening on cameos, dangled upon the breast. Pendants of all sorts hung from the girdles, utilitarian in the shape of golden keys or scissors, religious in the shape of a crucifix or the relic of a saint, along with purely aesthetic medallions of animals or flowers, or golden spheres—so many as to make a tinkling when one walked.

A new fashion in the pendant was introduced, a jewel on the forehead, hung from a hair band or adornment; in India, similar pendants had for centuries hung from the veil. This new pendant was called the ferronière, from La Ferrionière (“the ironmonger’s wife”) whose portrait survives, probably painted by Leonardo da Vinci when she was mistress of Francis I of France.

The Renaissance Across Europe

When Cellini went to France, he gave impetus to the art work there. In Spain, the goldsmiths fashioned reliquaries; they wrought pendants on which they hung the emeralds new-garnered from Peru; they favored bow-shaped brooches of many jewels, the ruby vying with the emerald. The great international bankers, the Fuggers, dealt also in jewels and gems. Hans Holbein the painter, while in England, made many designs for jewels. The painter Albrecht Dürer, son of a goldsmith, fashioned a pendant for Henry VIII, with the initials E R (Enricus Rex) and three large drops.

At the same time, the sons of wealthy merchants, the young bloods of the cities, with spangled chain and jeweled dagger hilt, aped the sons of nobles. Restrictive regulations did little to curb their display. As wealth was not yet evenly distributed, not everyone could afford the genuine precious stones, and the trade in paste flourished. Milan was the center of this manufacture. In addition to the ordinary glass used for imitation gems, strass glass was developed. Invented by Josef Strasser, this mixes lead or flint with the usual vitreous substance and obtains a greater lustre. Either type of glass often had placed beneath it, cunningly hidden in the setting, a tiny bit of quicksilver or tinfoil, to make the glass reflect more light and thus seem to sparkle with its own fire.

The Renaissance no more than earlier times had skill to know the genuine from the imitation. Cellini chuckles over the fact that Henry VIII of England, bargaining with a shrewd dealer of Milan for a fine set of jewels, received what he felt was one of his best buys—in paste.

The Reformation

The ease of working in these various modes overreached itself. The designs again grew more and more elaborate. Enseignes, medallions, love tokens, memorials of saints, grew heavier than the hats, than the heads, they were intended to adorn. Rings and bracelets were fashioned to be worn outside of gloves; gloves were fashioned with slits to display bracelets and rings within. Extravagance of ornament, though a minor cause, contributed to the revulsion against the many abuses of the day that led to the two reformations. The Church itself embarked on a housecleaning campaign, which included simplicity of dress and paucity of adornment.

The seventeenth century in Europe, in the field of jewels, was one of timid venturing. The Portuguese came to the fore with delicate work, golden sprays of leaves and flowers with tiny gems, ribbons and knots of gold. In France the sévigné appeared, a simple golden bow or rosette worn on the breast, named after the Marquise de Sévigné, a noted blue-stocking and one of the greatest letter writers of her day. The sévigné, at first rather plain, was elaborated during the eighteenth century into a massive brooch, or even a gemmed stomacher. The aigrette also appeared at this time, in the form of feather-like thin movable stalks of gold tipped with tiny gems set in enamel; these vibrated as the wearer moved.

The Eighteenth Century

In the eighteenth century greater attention was again paid to adornment. The aigrette became more popular, used mainly as an ornament for the hair. Thin silver stalks like stems of wheat were banded just below the center, with a slide for fastening; the tips were set with diamonds. Some pins for the hair and some brooches were fashioned with birds or butterflies, again on thin stalks so that they flitted as the wearer walked. This vibration of the aigrette added to the sparkle of the gems. I have made a variation of this jewel, as a flower, to fit the taste of the twentieth century.

A new type of pendant earring was the girandole. This appeared in two main forms. In one, from a large circular stone at the ear lobe hung three pear-shaped pendants, sometimes amethysts or other colored stones, but usually diamonds. In the other type, from the top stone was suspended an oval hoop of gold, within which a single large diamond hung loose.

More and more as the nineteenth century came near, the fashion in precious stones demanded diamonds. If not in the center of a jewel, they were used to set off the main one. They were worn in the new marquise ring, the gold of which was fashioned to hold a large oblong stone surrounded by diamonds. They were an essential element of the parure, the set of matching jewels, which developed in this century in France. Thus milady might have, in a parure, a bracelet, necklace, earrings, aigrette, and sévigné, all ordered together and made of the same metals and precious stones, patterned for their respective purposes in a concordant, harmonizing whole.

On the Romantics

For a time, under the influence of the rococo style, and the Gothic tendency in the other arts, it looked as though jewelry designs, becoming more and more elaborate and extravagant, might again approach the eccentric and achieve the inept. In 1755, however, the ruins of Pompeii were unearthed, with their treasures of antique style, and a classical simplicity became the order of the day, fostered for a time by the “return to nature” of the Romantics. It was felt, for instance, that the diamond, now prized beyond all other precious stones, shone most effulgent when it stood alone in a simple setting.

The wars toward the end of the eighteenth century, culminating in the French Revolution and the campaigns of Napoleon, shifted the ownership but did not stem the manufacture or the collection of jewels. The inventory of Mlle. Mars, taken in 1828, listed over sixty items, many of them treasures in themselves. Notable among these were: a necklace of two rows of brilliants (diamonds), forty-six in the first row, forty-eight in the second. Eight bunches of sprigs of wheat tipped with brilliants (that is, eight aigrettes) totaling about 500 brilliants weighing 57 carats; a garland of brilliants that could be worn as one bouquet or divided into three flower brooches, totaling 709 brilliants and 85¾ carats; a sévigné—mounted in colored gold a central large topaz was surrounded by brilliants, with three drops of opals also surrounded by brilliants, the whole set in gold studded with rubies and pearls; a pair of girandole earrings of brilliants—in each, from the large stud brilliant were suspended three pear-shaped brilliants, united by four smaller ones; a pair of earrings—from the large stud brilliant of each hung a cluster of 14 smaller brilliants, like a bunch of grapes; a parure of opals, consisting of a necklace, a sévigné, two bracelets, earrings, and a belt-plate. And Mlle. Mars, though a noted comic actress and a favorite of Napoleon, was by no means the outstanding society woman of her day.

Into the Nineteenth Century

By 1840 many new designs—frets, crescents, stars—were employed to show off the popular diamonds. These were still preeminent in the magnificence of the marriage of Napoleon III in 1853, but his Empress Eugénie revived the use of strings of pearls for the evening. Diamonds were then worn in similar strings, called rivières, necklaces of a succession of single stones, matched or graduated, with a very large stone in the center. A stone of ten carats was no longer considered large; the diamond must be at least fifteen carats, and preferably nearer forty. The large solitaire became popular, not only for engagement rings, but as the clip-stone on a pin or pendant, from the diamond often hanging a pear-shaped pearl.

The late nineteenth century developed an electicism, a freedom of choice among the various modes of the past, that continues into the jewelry design of our own day. Toward the end of the century, perhaps as a by-product of the school of les diaboliques in literature and art, there developed a desire to shock the bourgeoisie, and with it a certain desire for novelty, manifested in such bizarre items as live beetles worn as pins, or brooches of a live tortoise with gems set in its shell.

The Twentieth Century

A central ground of common sense and classical design was firmly maintained by Peter Carl Fabergé and the House of Fabergé, which designed many of the jewels at the turn of the century and continued popular among the Edwardians. The great World’s Fair in Paris in 1900 showed a fresh interest in design, and the use of such materials as translucent enamel, ivory, and horn. The influence of the Orient showed in these materials; it was also evident in larger and more colorful earrings and the multiplicity of bracelets.

Hair styles played their part in the shaping of jewelry. The pompadour in front, with chignon, increased the output of tortoise-shell combs, often studded with diamonds, and of fourches, large two-pronged hairpins similarly adorned. After 1914, the vogue of bobbed hair shifted production from combs to diamond slides. At the same time, the exposed ears made ear ornaments de rigueur. As many persons objected to having their ear lobes pierced for earrings, the earclip became popular; today it is almost universal in feminine fashion.

About this time, too, short sleeves led to an increased use of bracelets, often worn several on one arm. Especially popular has been the bangle bracelet, a band of gold from which are suspended coins, figures of men and animals, and other tokens and mementos. Sometimes golden disks are engraved with sentimental designs or sayings; sometimes the words are humorous, the figures grotesque.

Platinum and more recently palladium have been increasingly used as basic metals for the new jewelry, along with the now less frequent silver and the constant gold.

Spurred by René Lalique, the impetus of modern art has been felt in jewelry design. Cubic, non-representational, and other modes of abstract form have helped shape the modern bracelet, earclip, watch, and the case for powder, cigarettes, lighter, or the watch. While some jewels thus manifest the modern modes, others draw freely on the beauty of the past, as stimulus to the creation of fresh patterns of beauty for our day.

CHAPTER 2
What the Stones Are

What the Stones Are

On the basis of beauty, stones cannot be divided into precious and semiprecious for, from stone to stone, there is continuous range of color and glow. Nor indeed can price be the one criterion, for here many elements produce variety. Although the term “gem of the first water” is reserved for the flawless blue-white diamond, as the carats of the single stone increase the flawless ruby and the emerald become even more costly; and varieties and special specimens of other stones, such as the fire opal and imperial jade, move up into comparable range. For certain individuals, of course, a particular stone will have associations of sentiment that render it more precious—in the nontechnical sense—than another stone in the category of “precious.” It is, then, tradition rather than any inherent value that sets a secondary label, “semiprecious,” on all but five of the stones used for human adornment. Let us call these five the gems, to distinguish them from the other stones.

The Gems

There is no doubt that the five gems—diamond, ruby, emerald, sapphire, and pearl—have grown more fully than all others into our ways of living. They have become, as I shall indicate in this chapter, adornments not only of our persons but of our speech and writing. They are used not only in figures of jewelry but in figures of speech, to express human beauty, or eminence, or virtue. The poet and the orator, as well as the monarch and the lover, have utilized the glamour of the gem.

Diamond

Supreme in human imagination is the diamond, the hardest of all stones. The word diamond captures this significance, for it is from Greek adamas, meaning unconquerable, the tameless stone.

The diamond is also the only gem that is entirely composed of a single element. It is carbon, which also appears in its more common and less costly forms as soot, jet, and coal. The diamond is pure carbon crystallized in regular octahedrons, eight-sided figures.

For a long time, one word was used to mean both the diamond and the lodestone, the natural magnet. In French today, the gem is diamant, and the magnet is aimant—which also means loving. Perhaps the word changed because the natural magnet, attracting things to it, was thought of as “the loving stone.” The diamond is the beloved stone.

Most diamonds at their best are colorless, with perhaps a bluish glow. They may also be blue, green, violet, less often red—and black. The black diamond is usually unwanted for jewelry, but is used by lapidaries and others for cutting, grinding, and polishing hard stones.

If a jeweler speaks of a Matura diamond or a Ceylon diamond, he is using an old trade name for a zircon. Similarly, a Welsh, Irish, Cornish, Quebec, or California diamond is likely to be an attractive piece of rock crystal.

True diamonds were known in Asia at least as far back as 900 B.C. India was the homeland of the gem for many years. The best stones in the sixteenth century were those cut in Hyderabad, India, in the famed city of Golconda. Rich findings were made about 1720 in Brazil; in Borneo in 1738; elsewhere, diamonds were discovered in less significant amounts. But by far the richest hoards were unearthed in 1867 in South Africa, which is still the world’s greatest source of diamonds.

Although the lozenge is the characteristic shape of its crystal surface, the rough diamond stone is found in many shapes and cut into great variety. Because of the tears that the great tragic actress Sarah Bernhardt wrung from the audiences at his melodramas, Victor Hugo presented her with a tear-shaped diamond.

Among the many literary references to the diamond, the Elizabethan playwrights were particularly fond of the expression “diamond cut diamond”, meaning in that aristocratic age, when great man matched with great. In the more democratic nineteenth century, particularly with regard to those most democratic of spirits, the pioneers—such as the Americans opening up the West—it became popular to speak of an uncouth, unpolished but fundamentally fine fellow as “a diamond in the rough.”

Lovers at all times have linked this most brilliant of stones with their fair one’s sparkling eyes. One said that, wherever he went in the world, he found only his beloved:

If to far India’s coast we sail,

Thy eyes are seen as diamonds bright,

Thy breath is Amric’s spicy gale,

Thy skin is ivory’s soft white.

There are several sayings which, though they refer to the diamond, by indirection speak of mankind. Thus there is a warning to the person who is heedless of dress or decor, or of the furnishing of office or home, in the remark: “A fine diamond may be ill set.” There is, on the other hand, a challenge to pretense, or perhaps a warning to a person about to select an employee—or a mate—in the Chinese proverb: “A diamond with a flaw is better than a perfect pebble.”

Ruby

The ruby is a variety of corundum. The Sanskrit word kuruvinda was limited to the ruby, but we today use the word corundum to mean any form of aluminum oxide, chemically Al₂O₃. Corundum is next in hardness (though far inferior) to the diamond, and a hard granular form of it is used in grinding and polishing. In its pure, transparent form it is, according to its color, the ruby, the sapphire, the Oriental amethyst, or the Oriental topaz.

The Latin word ruber means red, and the crystalline corundum that is a ruby takes shades from pale rose-pink to a deep crimson that borders on the purple. The color is determined by the nature of the oxide, and the gem sometimes has a light silken sheen. A flawless deep red ruby is one of the rarest and most costly of gems.

Because of its great value, the ruby has often been used as a term of comparison for human worth, implying the highest excellence. The Scottish poet William Dunbar used it in pious thought: “Hail, redolent ruby, rich and radious! Hail, Mother of God!”

Among precious rubies, greatly desired is the star ruby, a gem so flawed that it catches the light as a sun with six out-shooting rays. “The sun is fair,” said the poet Drummond of Hawthorne on a fine summer’s morning, “when he with crimson crown and flaming rubies leaves his eastern bed.” The star ruby, with its three crossbars making six rays of light, has been thought by these lines of light to signify Faith, Hope, Charity, Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Thus it is doubly prized, for its good fortune and for its beauty.

The deep rubies of “pigeon’s blood” or ox-blood red come from Burma; those from Siam may be purplish brown; from Ceylon, more probably pink; a Brazilian ruby, a topaz; a Siberian ruby, a tourmaline; and a Balas ruby, a spinel.

Most frequent of all comparisons with gems are references to the “ruby lips” of beauty. Close after these come allusions to the rich red of wine, as when Fitzgerald tells us, in his translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

But still a ruby kindles in the vine,

And many a garden by the water blows.

Robert Herrick, the poet of youth and springtime, who advises us to enjoy lovely things while they are here—“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may”—in a note of more solemn warning says to a fair maid:

That ruby which you wear

Sunk from the tip of your soft ear

Will last to be a precious stone

When all your world of beauty’s gone.

What the maiden answered is not on record, but it is sadly pleasant to think, three hundred years later, that somewhere today that ruby is still beautiful and still enjoyed.

Sapphire

Sapphire is the current form of a Sanskrit word meaning dear to Saturn, an olden god whose reign was regarded as the golden age. The stone has been known since earliest times, although what the ancients called sapphire was probably the lapis lazuli, our sapphire being called by them the hyacinth. It is hard to tell, however, just what gem is intended when in the Song of Songs the Queen of Sheba sings of Solomon, her beloved: “His hands are as gold rings set with beryl; his belly is as bright ivory overlaid with sapphires.”

Our sapphire is a bluish transparent variety of native crystalline aluminum oxide, the same corundum that when it is red we call a ruby. The sapphire may be sky blue or cornflower blue, and shade through the lighter hues to an almost colorless stone, called white or water sapphire.

The sapphire is often used as a figure for the stars or for blue eyes: “Those eyes, those sparkling sapphires of delight”... “Now glowed the firmament with living sapphires.” This last line is by Milton, from Paradise Lost, which he dictated to his daughters when he was blind. The poet Gray pictures Milton as becoming blinded by his great vision:

He passed the flaming bounds of place and time,

The living throne, the sapphire-blaze,

Where angels tremble while they gaze,

He saw but, blasted with excess of light,

Closed his eyes in endless night.

While the sapphire at its best still captures the blue of a cloudless sky, it brings with it today a vision of more serene beauty.

Emerald

The emerald is the most precious of the large beryl group of stones. It has been deemed precious from ancient times. Cleopatra’s emerald mines are still being worked. A flawless deep green emerald of good size is extremely rare. Such a gem, normally, is table cut. The emerald also may be pierced for use as a bead, or engraved. In Egypt, the usual carving was a scarab—Cleopatra possessed one; in India, the carving often was a god.

The word emerald, before the sixteenth century, was esmeraldus and smaragdus; the Sanskrit word for the gem was marakta. As recently as the last century, Ralph Waldo Emerson summed up the chief sensuous impressions of the Orient: “Color, taste, and smell: smaragdus, sugar, and musk.”

There are few colors at once as striking and as restful as the green of an emerald. It seems to have the depths of the pure rays in a calm ocean. Coleridge in The Ancient Mariner used it for another form of the ever-changing waters:

And ice, mast-high, came floating by,

As green as emerald.

Tennyson used it for the widespread carpet of the land.

A livelier emerald sparkles in the grass.

In a lighter vein, it has been used to suggest the color of unripe fruit, as in Eugene Field’s verses on the peach:

A little peach in an orchard grew,

A little peach of emerald hue;

Warmed by the sun and wet by the dew,

It grew.

The green of the emerald makes it, in many minds, the most beautiful of colored gems.

Pearl

The pearl is the only one of the five gems that is the product of life. It gives body to the eternal paradox that out of evil springs good; out of deformity, beauty. For these reasons, the pearl is most frequently, of all gems, woven into symbols of man’s activity. “Honesty dwells like a miser, sir, in a poor house,” said Shakespeare, “as your pearl in a foul oyster.”

A pearl, as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it, is a nacreous concretion formed within the shell of various bivalve molluscs around some foreign substance (i.e., a grain of sand), composed of filmy layers of carbonate of lime interstratified with animal membrane.

Trying to isolate the intruding irritant, the oyster secretes a sticky fluid. The fluid hardens, another layer of it is secreted, and the pearl grows. The genuine pearl oyster is the meleagrina margaritifera. Margaritifera means pearl-bearing from which comes the name Margaret meaning pearl. Other molluscs may also form pearls, though not usually the varieties served in the months with an “R”.

Freshwater pearls come from mussels, of the kind called unionidae. Unionem is the Latin word for pearl—also for onion, which like the pearl is made up of layer upon layer. Mary Queen of Scots had a necklace of fifty-two graduated pearls, all of them fetched out of Scottish rivers.

Pearls are prized because of the beautiful lustre that glows upon them, pink or even bluish-grey, an iridescence over the basic white. Rarest are the large black pearls, which make a beautiful center drop on a brooch or a necklace. The pearl is hard and smooth in texture, beautiful to see and pleasant to feel.

The usual shapes in which a pearl grows are round, button, pear, and baroque (which in this use merely means irregular). The round pearls are used mainly for necklaces, which must be threaded in silk or plastic or other such material; any metal may darken and dull the beauty of a pearl. Button pearls are used in earclips, studs, brooches and rings. Pear-shaped pearls are attractive as pendants. The use of baroque pearls depends upon their shape and size.

Pearls are assorted and matched with great care, according to their size, shape, and color. The matching of a string of pearls may be a quest of twenty years. Sometimes a jeweler will hold the pearls until he has a matched necklace, graduated or of equal size; but it is also a challenge to a woman who enjoys jewels to buy a few pearls she can wear in various ways while watching for enough of their peers to form a string.

The lustrous inside of the oyster shell, formed of the same material as the gem, is called mother of pearl. A blister pearl is a flattish excrescence that, instead of being inside the soft oyster, adheres to the shell; it may be detached and used. Seed pearls are very tiny pearls, weighing less than a quarter of a grain.

For ages one of the most highly prized and priced of gems, the pearl has become less costly not because of changing taste or of successful simulation, but because man has learned the secret of the stimulation of the oyster to make it create a pearl. The best natural pearls come from the Persian gulf and the waters of Australia; but it is the Japanese who have most fully developed the technique of inserting a foreign body in the oyster, so that it then carries on, under its own living power, the process of making a real—but what is called a cultured—pearl. Man proposes and the oyster disposes.

From the “gates of pearl” through which Saint Peter allows the elect to enter Heaven, to the guardians—“of Orient pearl a double row”—of the smiling mouth, the pearl has been caught into proverb and poem. At the beginning of this century, the pearl figured in a popular song:

The hours I’ve spent with you, dear heart,

Are as a string of pearls to me;

I count them over, every one apart,

My rosary.

For some reason, all of Shakespeare’s references to the pearl are linked with sadness. The song in The Tempest tells:

Full fathom five thy father lies,

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes ...

And it is after Othello has killed his faithful wife Desdemona and has discovered that his clouding suspicions were untrue, that he calls himself:

One whose hand,

Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away

Richer than all his tribe.

As far back as the Bible a thing of supreme quality was referred to as a pearl of great price; and the same book (Matthew) issues the famous warning: “Neither cast ye your pearls before swine.”

In other ways the pearl has been used as a symbol. The poet Swinburne, in sentimental mood, exclaimed:

The world has no such flowers in any land,

And no such pearl in any gulf the sea,

As any babe on any mother’s knee.

The rarity of the stone, and the difficult task of the pearl-diver, are used symbolically in an epigram by Dryden:

Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;

He who would search for pearls must dive below.

The American poet, William Russell Lowell (father of the Supreme Court Justice of the same name), wrote in his copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred,

Each softly lucent as a rounded moon;

The diver Omar plucked them from their bed,

Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread.

Other Stones

The other stones, though less esteemed in lore and letters, have many claims to beauty. One shining specimen may adorn a jewel; or several of a kind, or combinations of various stones, may create effects that rival those of the gems. The four native stones among the five gems are usually translucent, while most of the other stones are opaque. A transparent or translucent stone, if it is cut as a prism or if its crystalline structure is right, may break light into rainbow hues, and, catching these rays, may shoot them around in varying interplays of sparkle and color. The opaque stones, on the other hand, often smooth of surface, are colored in ways that seem to snare the light and send it out with added power and color. Special characteristics add to the beauty of many of these stones, the main varieties of which we shall now glance at, in alphabetical order.

Agate

The agate is a variety of chalcedony. It is named from the river Achates, in Sicily. A hard stone, of striped or cloudy coloring, it is often yellow or tawny brown. Shakespeare in Romeo and Juliet uses the agate in a ring to indicate the size of Queen Mab, who—before Freud brought us other fancies—was the bringer of dreams:

She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes

In shape no bigger than an agate-stone

On the forefinger of an alderman ...

In her coach, Queen Mab gallops by night

Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;

O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on curtsies straight;

O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees;

O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream.

Alexandrite

The stone alexandrite was given its name from Alexander II (1818-1881), Czar of all the Russias, in whose realm it was found. It is a variety of chrysoberyl, containing chromium. It has the interesting quality of being dark green in daylight, but under artificial illumination glowing a brilliant red. These were the national colors of Russia, the green standing for felicity, the red for humanity.

Amethyst

The amethyst is a variety of quartz—often called the queen of quartz—purple or violet in color. It is one of the earliest stones found in jewelry and has been used in every period. It is especially attractive in combination with gold and pearls.

People as early as the Greeks have used the amethyst as a talisman against intoxication. In 1502, Camilli Leonardi observed that the amethyst protected the mild drinker and cautioned its wearer against excess; but when its warnings were unheeded, the stone grew wan and died. There is no question, as I can testify from my direct observation, that continuing drunkenness of its wearer will cause an amethyst (like a person) to grow dull.

A motion picture star, well known all over the world—her life recorded in a major film—some time ago was in quest of an unusual necklace. At the time, I was in Hollywood as jewelry consultant to a motion picture company. As I happened to be staying at the same hotel as this actress, we often went to the studio together, and we became rather friendly. When she mentioned to me that she had been looking for a necklace that was distinctive and personalized, I told her that her complexion and hair coloring made it desirable—in my mind, almost mandatory—for her to have the jewel made of deep purple Uruguayan amethysts combined with diamonds. That night I made a sketch of such a jewel, and sent it to her the next morning. She was enchanted. So was the Hollywood jeweler who was entrusted with the making of the necklace from my design, for it was a great success, the talk of the season in the movie colony.

What the jeweler did not tell me—what perhaps he did not know, as neither did I—was that this glamorous star, with an angelic face and a skin the poet Byron might despair of describing, used to hide away once a month or more and drink herself into complete intoxication. We did not know, but the amethysts did. Within a year the deep velvety purple had faded; the stones were pale, and they had lost their lustre. The warning of the amethysts had gone unheeded.

Aquamarine

The aquamarine is a pale, transparent, bluish-green variety of beryl. Being of much the same chemical composition as the emerald, it is sometimes called blue emerald. Although it is not a rare stone, when step cut the aquamarine has a pleasant glow, and may be combined with diamonds to make a distinctive jewel.

Beryl

Beryl is, chemically, a silicate of aluminum and glucinum, Be₃Al₂(SiO₃)₆. It usually forms in hexagonal crystals. When there is also in the stone some oxide of chromium, it becomes a bright or a deep green: this is the emerald.

The word beryl covers a large number of hard and lustrous stones. At first it was applied to clear crystals; thus in the fifteenth century we find references to “water clear as beryl.” A pale bluish-green variety of beryl is the aquamarine. A yellow variety is the chrysoberyl (chrysos is the Greek word for gold).

Carnelian

The carnelian was originally the cornelian. Because of its flesh color, the name was changed under the influence of the Latin word for flesh, carnem. Carnelian is a red variety of chalcedony.

Cat’s-eye

There are two varieties of the cat’s-eye, equally effective against evil spirits. The stone may be either olive green, or reddish brown. The most attractive shades are bamboo and moss green. The distinguishing feature of the stone is that it seems to have a horizontal slit that sends back a white band of light, moving with the stone, and resembling the gleam in the baleful eye of a cat. Other appropriately sinister colorings are sometimes called tiger’s-eye and hawk’s-eye. The Oriental cat’s-eye is a mineral of the chrysoberyl group; the Occidental, somewhat less glinting, is a variety of quartz.

The cat’s-eye, of course, is in wide repute for the power it confers of seeing in the dark. Thus it is an excellent stone for hunters. But it proves similarly effective in mental darkness, providing the power for seeing through the schemes of connivers. Wearing a cat’s-eye may thus save one from becoming a cat’s-paw. I met a detective recently who was wearing a superb hawk’s-eye ring; he told me he had just received notice of his promotion, “with distinction,” to the rank of captain.

Chalcedony

Chalcedony is the name of a large group of stones, variously colored, consisting mainly of non-crystal quartz. It has the lustre of wax. Chalcedony has been known from early times and is mentioned in the Bible. Among the stones belonging to this group are agate, carnelian, chrysoprase, jasper, onyx, and sard.

Chrysoberyl

The various stones beginning with chrys (Greek for gold) should in the main be yellow. Chrysoberyl is a yellowish, sometimes slightly greenish, mineral, beryllium aluminate, chemically Be Al₂O₄. It has been used for adornment since ancient times.

Chrysolite

This is a rather common yellow silicate of magnesium and iron, of granular structure. When, as sometimes occurs, it is greenish in tint, it is called olivine by mineralogists, but when used for adornment jewelers call it peridot.

Chrysolite is mentioned as one of the foundation stones of the New Jerusalem prophesied in Revelations. Shakespeare has Othello, wrought with agony over his beloved Desdemona whom he believes unfaithful, exclaim:

Nay, had she been true,

If heaven would make me such another world

Of one entire and perfect chrysolite

I’d not have sold her for it.

There is indeed beauty in an entire and perfect chrysolite.

Chrysoprase

Gold touched with leek (prason is the Greek word for leek) marks the color of the chrysoprase. It is a light green quartz, a variety of chalcedony. As chrysoprasus, it is listed in the King James Bible as the tenth foundation stone of the New Jerusalem.

Citrine

Named from the citrus family, citrine is a lemon-yellow variety of quartz. When clear, it may be used as becomingly as topaz.

Coral

Coral is a fairly hard substance, mainly calcium carbonate, made up of the skeletons of myriads of marine animals called polyps. These skeletons, attached to one another, through the centuries have formed shelves in the ocean, or shaped themselves as atolls and far-extending reefs. Coral may be in many colors, white, black, yellow, blue, and—most popular in jewelry—shades of pink and red. The reddish shades, the Greeks inform us, are dyed by the blood of the Gorgon Medusa, whose snake-haired head, lopped off by Perseus, dripped its gore into the sea as he laid it by to wash his hands. Scientists inform us the red is produced by the presence of iron oxide.

The ancient Romans placed coral on cradles, to protect the babe against the ills of infancy, especially teething. Even today, Italian peasants use it as a charm against sterility, or in the form of a little bell the wind might make tinkle to drive off evil spirits. If one has ever knocked wood, one might place on the babe a ring or a trinket of coral.

References to the beloved one’s coral lips were so frequent in Renaissance poetry that Shakespeare in revulsion wrote his Sonnet 130:

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red ...

—And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.

A century later another playwright, William Congreve, also used the image in a passage of scorn, after describing the physical allure of a great beauty:

But soon as e’er the beauteous idiot spoke,

Forth from her coral lips such folly broke

Like balm the trickling nonsense healed my wound,

And what her eyes enthralled, her tongue unbound.

How true love grows through a lifetime by tiny, unnoticed moments is beautifully pictured—to give an instance of a happier use of a coral image—by the nineteenth-century poet Coventry Patmore:

... Fondness for her underwent

An unregarded increment

Like that which lifts, through centuries,

The coral reef within the seas.

Garnet

The garnet is a hard glass-like silicate mineral. It is found in many colors: green, yellow, orange, pink and black. When it is a deep, translucent red, it can be used to form a beautiful jewel. Its name is a corruption of granate, seeded, as also in the pomegranate, the seed-apple.

The garnet is sometimes cut faceted. The deep red, cabochon cut is sometimes called a carbuncle, which means glowing coal. In trade terms, the pyrope garnet is a deep blood red; the almandine garnet a violet red. The Adelaide, Cape and Colorado “rubies” all are garnets.

Hyacinth

The color of the flower and the stone have given note to the name hyacinth. In ancient times, the word was probably used to designate what we call the sapphire. Today it is applied to any of the reddish or purplish varieties of the garnet, topaz, or zircon.

Jacinth

Jacinth is really another form of the word hyacinth. It is used, now, especially to denote a reddish orange variety of zircon. The jacinth was a favorite jewel of ancient times, its mention ranging from the Bible to the Thousand and One Nights.

Jade

Two silicates of lime and magnesium are called jade. One, the true jade, is a complex silicate also called jadeite. It is a tough substance, usually green or white, and somewhat translucent. The other, less valuable form, called nephrite, occurs in other colors.

Found in Burma and India, also in Mexico and Central America, jade did not enter early into western literature; English mentions of jade usually refer to the horse.

The word jade is from the Spanish piedra de yjada, stone of the side. It is named from the belief that the stone counteracted pains in the sides and kidneys. And the word nephrite is from Greek nephros, kidney. Chinese women, indeed, clutched a piece of jade tightly in their hands during childbirth. They had a double purpose in this: the stone, being an effective charm, lessened their labor pains; and, being a symbol of aristocracy, it ensured the male infant high rank and the female a successful marriage. Mandarins, though not for the same reasons, sometimes “spiked” their rice wine with powdered jade.

A piece of the deep green stone called imperial jade is one of the most beautiful stones to look upon, and one of the most pleasant to touch. It combines superbly with diamonds to create handsome jewels.

Jasper

Jasper was a stone treasured in antiquity. Although Biblical references indicate a greenish stone, the jasper we know today is usually reddish, yellow, or brown, in mottled colors. It is an opaque variety of quartz.

The jasper was sometimes used as a symbol of perfection. Thus the Scot poet William Dunbar, about 1525, hailed the growing capital of England:

London, thou art the flower of cities all!

Gem of all joy, jasper of jocundity!

One might suspect Dunbar of bringing in the jasper to chime with the jocundity, were it not more likely that he brought in the jocundity to chime with the jasper!

Jet

This stone, which gives its name to its color, a shiny dark black, might be called kissing kin to the diamond. It is a kind of lignite, one of the forms of pure carbon, differing from coal and diamond only in the arrangement of the molecules. It is an intense black in color but very soft.

The name jet is from the Greek gagates, which indicates that it comes from Gagas, a town and a river of Lycia in Asia Minor. Jet, however, was known also to the ancient Celts, who carved it.

Although its color has made it popular mainly for religious and especially (in the western world) for mourning motifs, jet has a bright glow upon its black that can be effective in earclips and other jewel forms.

Kunzite

Named for the American gem expert George F. Kunz (1856—1932), kunzite is a stone of attractive lilac crystals. It is a transparent variety of spodumene which is a crystalline mineral, lithium aluminum silicate, chemically Li Al (Si O₃)₂. Spodumene is usually yellow or light green; in its more delicate shadings, used for ornament, it is now called kunzite.

Lapis Lazuli

Known from earliest times, and in high repute as an ornamental stone, lapis lazuli is a mixture of various minerals. It is azure blue and opaque, usually with tiny golden flecks. The name means the azure stone.

Some old-time customs and cures, persisting in spite of superior smiles and “scientific” derision, have been found to incorporate materials which modern medicine has in its time welcomed into the pharmacopoeia, the checkbook of current remedies. In ancient times, lapis lazuli was used as a “charm” against bleeding of the nose, against inflammation of the eyes, against any kind of hemorrhage. The Egyptians prescribed lapis lazuli 4,000 years before chemists noted the astringent qualities of copper oxide—which is what gives the golden flecks to lapis lazuli.

Malachite

Malachite is a basic copper carbonate, chemically CuCO₃Cu(OH)₂. It can be highly polished and takes its name from the green color of the leaves of the mallow plant, the marsh variety of which gives its name to a popular candy. The stone is used for small boxes and other decorative pieces; well polished, it makes an attractive ring.

Moonstone

Moonstone is a milky-white translucent variety of feldspar, with a pearly lustre.

Feldspar (also felspar, meaning spar of the field) is any of a group of crystalline minerals, made up mainly of aluminum silicates. They are glassy and moderately hard, and are found among igneous rocks. Spar is the name of various shiny materials that break off easily, in chips or flakes. Few of these varieties are used in ornaments, but the even milk-white tone of a good moonstone makes it effective in jewels.

Onyx

Named, because of its pale color, from the Greek word for nail, onyx is a variety of agate. It consists of alternate layers of different colored stone, as can be seen around the edge; this makes it prized for carving, especially in cameos.

Opal

The opal was represented in such variety in early times that the word upala was the general Sanskrit term for a precious stone. The opal comprises a large group of vitreous, translucent silicas, possessing the property of refracting light and then reflecting it in a play of colors. Silica is a dioxide of silicon, chemically Si O₂, a hard glassy mineral that includes quartz and sand as well as opal. According as the compound includes iron, magnesium or other elements, the color of the stone varies.

The best opals are the result of a flaw in their formation. Being hydrated silicas, they were at first a sort of semi-liquid, jellified substance; as this hardened, cracks and fissures were created by unevenness in the material and in the speed of the hardening. These tiny spaces trapped air or moisture, and it is this that produces the phenomenon of refraction and reflection of light and gives the colorings and variations known as opalescence. The play of light is at its best when the stone is cut cabochon, except for the fire opal, which is faceted.

There are three chief varieties of opal. The common or white opal has a cloudy-white background, with pastel patches that often give it a veritable sunrise glow. The black opal has actually a very dark green background, in which there are deep pools of blue and green with patches of flame. Rare, and most magnificent, is the fire opal, which seems almost transparent, its body of smooth reddish orange shooting forth into flame.

The opal is a delicate stone. It may be damaged by heat. It absorbs grease, and may thus become dull. The outstanding and valued feature of the stone is its opalescence. This creates a constantly changing, almost kaleidoscopic play of lights. It is this variability that gives point to the reference in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: “Now the melancholy god protect thee, and the tailor make thy garment of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal.”

Peridot

The peridot, a yellowish-green variety of chrysolite, was popular in early England. It fell from favor but was reintroduced from France in the seventeenth century. It is a beautiful stone, often as large as 30 carats, and again growing in favor.

Quartz

Quartz is one of the silicas, chemically Si O₂, as is the opal. It is abundant as a colorless, transparent substance; it also appears as a brilliant crystal. The name quartz is from the German zwerg, meaning dwarf. Similarly cobalt and nickel are from German words for sprites, the gnomes being little creatures that work the mine of the gods.

In its crystalline form quartz includes amethyst, cairngorm, citrine, quartz cat’s-eye, rock crystal, and rose quartz. Another main group in the quartz family is chalcedony, which includes agate, bloodstone, carnelian, jasper, moss agate, onyx, sard, and sardonyx. These stones are used for beads for carving cameos and intaglios.

Sard

Sard is a very hard, deep orange-red variety of chalcedony. Its name rises from the fact that it originally came from Sardis in Asia Minor.

Sardonyx

Sardonyx is a variety of onyx in which the alternating layers are of white chalcedony and sard. It can be cut into beautiful cameos.

The sardonyx is not to be confused with the sardonics, known for their scornful smile. The latter have no connection with the powers of the stone; they derive their name from the plant of Sardinia, the island off Italy. The plant, we are told, was poisonous, and made its victims sneer while dying. More scientific botanical tales aver that the plant was bitter, so that its taste at once produced contortions of the mouth. In either event, the bitter, superior smile of the sardonic comes from another part of the world than the peaceful sardonyx stone of Sardis, Asia Minor.

Spinel

Spinel is so called, little spine, from the shape of its crystals. It is a hard mineral, composed mainly of oxide of aluminum, with iron or magnesium. The proportions of the metals determine the color, which ranges from rose pink through green, blue, and purple, to black. The red variety, rare and costly, is sometimes called a spinel ruby. It is also known as a balas ruby, from Arabian balakhsh, from the Persian province of Balakhshan, where spinels from pink to orange have long been found.

Topaz

The topaz ranges widely in color, according as other substances are present in the complex aluminum silicate that is its basis, chemically Al₂Si O₄F₂. It is transparent, crystalline, and may be white, pale blue, or pale green; but the yellow shade (produced by the presence of fluorine) is preferred for use in a jewel. It often develops its crystals in large clusters; the National Museum in Washington has one weighing 153 pounds.

Brazilian topaz is genuine topaz. Oriental topaz, however, is a yellowish crystalline corundum; Occidental topaz, a yellow quartz, citrine. Topazolite is a yellow variety of garnet.

The topaz is mentioned in the Bible as the ninth foundation stone of the New Jerusalem. It has not entered greatly into literature, being an undramatic stone, and is not usually at its best when combined with others; but it can be so fashioned as to display a serene and quiet beauty.

Tourmaline

The tourmaline is any of a variety of complex silicoborates, formed into a brittle mineral, crystalline stone. It was originally found in Ceylon, first being brought to the West in the eighteenth century. The surface of the stone has a vitreous lustre. A black, opaque variety is called schorl; a blue variety, indicolite; a red, rubellite. The tourmaline is most attractive, and most frequently chosen for jewels, in a colorless transparent or translucent variety, and in deep green.

Turquoise

The turquoise was originally found in Persia, where it is still a favorite and lucky stone. It was also found along the Sinai Peninsula; but it was transported to the West by way of Turkey, whence its name, the Turkish stone. It is also found in the western United States and, in its rare crystalline form, in Virginia.

The turquoise is a hydrous phosphate of aluminum, with a little copper or iron determining its color, from sky blue to greenish grey. It is best when a rich green-blue. The stone is rather soft and is cut cabochon. Like the opal, it absorbs grease and dirt and may grow dull. Over-exposure to strong light will cause it to fade.

There may often be several hues in the one turquoise; it is another stone that can be wrought into parures of quiet beauty.

Zircon

Zircon is really a silicate of zirconium, an element discovered by Martin Klaproth. Zircon is chemically Zr Si O₄, a mineral occurring in tetragonal crystals. Though it is found in many colors—yellow, brown, red, pastels of green and blue—the colorless and transparent varieties are in demand for jewels. The brown zircon, heated, turns first blue, then colorless. Without the diamond hardness and full sparkle, the colorless zircon more nearly approaches the radiance of the diamond than any other stone.

The word zircon is from the Arabic zarqun, meaning cinnabar, from Persian zar, meaning gold, and this indicates the ancients’ favorite colors of the stone. It is also called the jargon or jargoon. A red zircon is also known as a hyacinth.

CHAPTER 3
Birthstones and the Magic of Gems

The Seasons

Precious stones have from earliest times been associated with special powers. Not only were they guardians against demons, but each by its particular virtue warded off certain diseases or other misfortunes. In their astrological aspects, they could help to arrange, if not wholly to secure, a happy future. From this connection with things to come, the gems came to be linked with various times: each season, each month, even each day of the week, had its special stone.

The season of spring, with the first flowering of the reborn year, is considered especially appropriate for the amethyst, the green diamond, the chrysoberyl, the spinel, the pink topaz, the olivine, and the emerald. The bright sun of summer, that bells the fruit and spreads the foliage, is best for zircon, garnet, ruby, and fire opal. Spinel, chrysoberyl, and pink topaz still hold their charm. As the languors of summer tang toward the crispness of autumn, it grows time for sapphire, hyacinth, oriental chrysolite, tourmaline, jacinth, and topaz. Then with the challenge of winter come turquoise, white sapphire, rock crystal, quartz, moonstone, pearl, and the gleaming diamond. Of course, the brilliant solitaire, the diamond of the engagement ring, is an appropriate stone in any season.

The Days of the Week

The days of the week are more intricately bound in gemmed symbol. If you know the day on which you were born, you can garner all the good fortune that comes with the proper stone. Each day of the week, along with the stone, bears other significances and powers.

Sunday

The golden-yellow day of King Sol, the sun, is marked with the yellow jacinth. If one wears this, we are told, one has the power of a lion on that day—especially when Leo, the lion in the heavens, takes the summer season with the sun.

But also this is a token of secrecy in the man—it ensures discretion, always advisable, often essential, in a lover—while in the woman it betokens generosity, always desired but not always appreciated by a lover.

Monday

The serene day of the moon is the day for pearls. Pearls should be bestowed on a Monday. The color white is bound with them and with the day, for the snow-white blanket of peacefulness. A man might wear a pearl in a tie clasp, bar, or in a tie pin, which is coming back into favor. The pearl is a token, in a man, of friendship, of integrity, of a religious feeling; and in a woman of contemplation, purity, affability.

Tuesday

Tuesday is a more active day. Tiw is the Nordic god of war, and his name is used to translate the Latin for Mars’ day. Hence its stone is the blood-red ruby. This is a fitting day to hold in memory those who have died valiantly in battle. But it is likewise a day to be on one’s guard, for while the star ruby marks nobility and power of command in the man, it may also spill over in excess to bloody vengeance. And in the woman, while the ruby of this day adorns a proper pride, it may descend to a pettier obstinacy. At its best, the ruby is resplendent on a Tuesday.

Wednesday

Although Woden was king of the Nordic gods, his name is used to translate the Latin for the day of the fickle and thievish Mercury, who was placated on this day. The emerald is its precious stone. The color green may mark jealousy when it flickers in a woman’s eyes, but in a gem it is a token of change. In a man it betokens joyousness, quick-soaring but transitory. In the woman, with the Wednesday emerald comes a spontaneous, childlike delight in passing things, a love of variety. This is a good day to hold in memory those who have died in the flower of youth.

Thursday

Thor’s day, said the Anglo-Saxons. Again they transmuted the powers, for Thor is the god of war, while to the Romans this is the day of Jupiter, king of the gods. It is a violet day, the day of the violet sapphire. This is a precious stone indeed, and a potent day. In the man it marks sober judgment, gravity, industry. In the woman the Thursday sapphire denotes high thoughts, and a love that lifts beyond the body with the spirit. Fortunate are they between whom a violet sapphire passes on a Thursday.

Friday

Here the Anglo-Saxons made no mistake, for Friya is their god of love, and Friday is Venus’ day. Friday still feels the force of the sapphire, but the sapphire must be blue. In the man, the blue sapphire marks magnanimous thoughts and wisdom.

In the woman, the blue sapphire of Friday, especially the star sapphire, marks courtesy and keen powers of observation. The girl Friday sees more than she tells. But there is need for caution; without the stone, these feminine powers may shift to a colder watchfulness, accompanied by jealousy and suspicion. Beware a flaw in the precious stone, the precious one. Friday is an auspicious day for love, if love is bedecked with a blue sapphire.

Saturday

Saturday is the seventh day, the day of rest. Thus the Anglo-Saxons did not labor to translate it from the Latin; it is the day of Saturn, the Roman god of time and growth. Saturn was the father and first king of the gods; his stone is the king of gems, the diamond. Saturday crowns the days of the week, as the diamond crowns the family of the gems. In a man the diamond marks gravity, fortitude, constancy. In a maiden, it may betoken a certain giddiness, a flighty fancy that has not yet found its destination; but in a woman it marks perseverance and constancy. The woman of the Saturday diamond knows what she wants, and works unfaltering to attain it.

The Months

Thus, from the jacinth and the pearl to the sapphire and the diamond, runs the gemmed story of the days. More fixed in popular imagination are the special stones of the months, for these have become the birthstones that mark the natal days. In early times there was considerable variety; today there is general agreement as to these stones. They may have come, as many believe, from the twelve stones in the breastplate of the Jewish high priest. Or they may be transferred from the twelve foundation stones proclaimed in Revelations for the New Jerusalem. The ages have fixed them as memorials of birth, and one should have at least one lucky jewel adorned with one’s birthstone.

TABLE OF BIRTHSTONES

Each of the birthstones is caught into more than one jingle. Its powers have been trusted so long that folklore has wrapped them in song, and truth hangs upon them like the beard of a patriarch. And the stones themselves endow the wearer with the special grace of the natal day.

January: Garnet

By her who in this month is born

Gaily the garnet should be worn;

’Twill guarantee love’s constancy

And warm her in felicity.

The January stone, at its best, is a deep red, or a red shading to violet. With its burgundy sparkle, it has a dark brilliance found in no other gem.

The color of the garnet drew it naturally to association with blood. It has been considered a sovereign remedy against all kinds of inflammation and bleeding and disorders of the blood. Since the face flushes with anger, the garnet was held as a charm against anger; it was felt to have a calming influence and to be potent against mental disorders. Psychoanalysts take long years to accomplish what one may gain just by the wearing of a garnet.

Pile on the coal.

And if there’s a hole

In underclothes, go darn it.

This is the time

For winter’s rime,

And for the ruddy garnet.

February: Amethyst

The February born will find

Sincerity and peace of mind,

Freedom from passion or from care,

If they the amethyst will wear.

The February stone has a wider range of color, and may be chosen in any shade from light lilac to a deep royal purple. It is a symbol of beauty and of power. It has been traditionally associated with the Princes of the Church, and down the ages has been the chosen royal gem.

Out of the ancient Hebrew comes the thought that the amethyst has the power to prevent nightmares and unpleasant dreams.

With its buried meanings of beauty and power, of power-claiming beauty, the amethyst was one of the earliest stones to be cut in the shape of a heart.

Here is a story of the best known and most heralded of the powers of the amethyst, its potency as a guard against intoxication, against the evil effects of overindulgence.

The god of revelry and wine, Bacchus, we are told, fell in love with a nymph, who sought to avoid his tipsy embrace. (One needs not the gods to picture such a pickle!) This nymph, however, prayed to Diana, goddess vowed to chastity. Diana changed her to an amethyst, with power to withstand the effects of drink. The frustrated Bacchus gave the stone the color of wine. Hence the amethyst was known to the Greeks as “the sobering gem.” It should surely be the token stone of Alcoholics Anonymous, for its very name, a-methyst, comes from the Greek, meaning “against strong drink.”

February, we are told, is the cruellest month; its chill seems to call for the warm coursing of an invigorating drink. It is most fortunate that the stone for this month of biting cold is the amethyst.

Red the cheek glows,

Still redder the nose;

Jack Frost the lips has kissed.

Spice the hot drink;

Let glasses clink—

And wear the amethyst!

March: Aquamarine

Who in this world of ours their eyes

In March first open, shall be wise,

In days of peril firm and bold,

If they an aquamarine will hold.

March is the month when spring rains begin. It is also the month when of old, after the winter’s frost, men ventured forth again. In the Mediterranean to the south, and from the fjords and headlands of the north, our ancestors pushed their boats out from the shore, in quest of food and far adventure. Thus the gem of March is the aquamarine, whose name means “water of the sea.” And the stone is truly cousin to the waters. At its best it is clear as mid-ocean, and of a brilliant greenish blue. It has been said that whoever wears an aquamarine can do no dirty deed, will all his life be clean of body and spirit. For this reason, the aquamarine is a favorite gift to a newborn baby.

Sea voyagers today, as the Vikings long ago, for protection from the dangers of the deep may wear an aquamarine.

Hark how the rain

Beats on the pane!

It flushes the world with green.

Brooks are all high,

Roads never dry—

Everything’s aquamarine!

April: Diamond

She who from April dates her years

Diamonds should wear, lest bitter tears

In vain repentance flow; this stone

Emblem of innocence is known.

With the magic of spring, in myriad raindrops lit by the sudden sun, in the glint of young leaves and the brightness of early flowers, April shares the sparkle of the diamond. For springtime and for its precious stone, superlatives are the order of the season. The diamond has the greatest brilliance and most power of reflection of all gems. Its clearness and its cleanness are unsurpassed. It is colorless, yet it can show the entire spectrum of colors.

The god of mines, we are told, created the diamond by pulverizing all other precious stones—ruby, sapphire, emerald, and the gathered host—blending and pressing them into one supreme stone, a crystal that, itself without color, imprisons and releases all the fused colors in its core.

More sentimentally, legend records that in one of his unguarded tender moments, Jupiter, king of the gods, asked the young man who had rocked him in his cradle to name his own reward. The young man asked that he might endure unchanged forever. Jupiter turned him into a diamond.

Increasingly through the centuries has the diamond been valued. Popes have proclaimed its virtues. Musical comedies have sung its praises. Only the flawless diamond, the Hindus pointed out, has the power to heal. Pope Clement VII stated that the greatest curative potency dwelt in the powdered diamond. In the eighteenth century, the French maintained—to the smiling acquiescence of the feminine kind—that the diamond possesses talismanic virtue only when given as a gift; a purchased diamond held no luck for the purchaser.

This symbolism blent with the meaning of the ring to make the diamond the first formal gift to the loved woman upon betrothal. As the seal of an engagement, a solitaire is more effective than the old “writ” or quill-penned bond; it symbolizes at once a bond and an indestructible union of power and beauty.

There is in this gem, though it is not always the most costly of precious stones, the strongest appeal to a woman, and she is fortunate indeed whose claim to the diamond is a birthright.

A diamond in a jewel adorning another beauty sets unrest in a woman’s heart, until she too is asparkle. The diamond is a sign of love; it confers loveliness, or at least it imposes pride. It is the ambition of every woman—and it should be the fortune of everyone Aprilborn—to possess a flawless diamond.

After the shower

Brightens the hour,

Flowers lift on the stem.

Raindrop sparkles

Till evening darkles:

Diamond is the gem.

May: Emerald

Who first beholds the light of day

In Spring’s sweet flowery month of May

And wears an emerald all her life,

Will be a loved and happy wife.

May is the month when meadows and woods put on their richest garb of green. May is the month of the emerald. The ancients said that the gem was the captured glow of the firefly.

Deep green and translucent, this stone at its best is very rare. It was prized before and beyond all other stones and, for large flawless gems, outvies the diamond. Among church stones it ranks very high; Andreas, Bishop of Caesarea, wrote of the emerald: “Its transparency and beauty may not change; we conceive the stone to signify John the Evangel.”

The potency of the emerald has been extolled in various fields. It was especially prized as a panacea for poisons. In this field, it was an admirable alexipharmic; it protected against poison from fangèd bite, and from the gangrene of wounds. It warded off the dangers of poison artfully secreted in food; also, of poison from eating the wrong food, as toadstools for mushrooms, spoiled food, or just too much food. And it preserved one from that most pestilent of all poisons, the poisoning of the mind.

Still more widespread was the use of the emerald as a talisman and a cure-all for the eye. The calming influence of its dark green hue has been recognized from early times to the modern eye shade. The Roman Emperor Nero, who suffered from an eye ailment, used to hold a specially ground emerald before his eye to relieve the strain, and to enjoy the relaxation that came with its gentle soothing. In the early Renaissance the watchmakers and the goldsmiths, their eyes bleary from long strain at their fine operations, would pause in their work and gaze upon an emerald. The emerald is the only stone that delights the eye without ever bringing fatigue.

Less worthy use was made of the emerald by those ambitious in love. In the Orient, the emerald was the token of love and was often used to adorn the statues of the god or the goddess of love. But later it became associated (as were the gods themselves) with the more passionate aspects of love. Then the emerald was employed—often, of course, as a bribe to the pandar or a gift to the girl, but also as a talisman—by those who sought success in their amours.

It is in its more peaceful aspects, of the green and eye-enchanting colors of May, that one cherishes the emerald.

Spring in its glory

Tells the bright story

Of the young year at play.

It tries on the sheen

Of gold and of green:

Emerald’s the precious for May.

June: Pearl

Who comes with summer to this earth

And owes to June her day of birth,

With ring of pearl upon her hand

Can health, wealth, happiness command.

And what is so rare as a day in June?

Then, if ever, come perfect days,

Then heaven tries earth, if it be in tune,

And over it softly her warm ear lays.

Whether we look, or whether we listen,

We hear life murmur, and see it glisten.

What symbol of glistening life could be more significant than the lustrous pearl? It is one of the gems that delights in more than the beholding, for the feel of the soft fine smoothness of the gem is like the petal of a pansy.

While the pearl does not have the brilliance and fire of a well-cut precious stone, it has a soft glow unique among gems, and an amazing variety of glints and shadings around its basic hue, from the purest white to the darkest black. Most desired of its dark shades is the “mordoré,” a greenish coppery iridescence over black. This, however, is so rare that not more than four necklaces of such pearls are known. More frequent among the valued shades are the cream and the light pink pearl.

A pearl is in its very being a symbol, the triumphant growth of beauty from disease. It marks the victory over drawbacks and handicaps, the building of one’s treasure out of one’s disadvantages.

From its gentle color and its smooth shape, the pearl came to be the symbol of modesty and purity. It was endowed with many powers. It brought succor in times of distress. It cemented friendships, out of first likings fashioning firm ties. It strengthened a weak heart and a weak memory. It gave maids courage to resist, and men stoutheartedness to overcome, evil.

Especially in the Orient, where it was first widely known, there have been many uses of the pearl. It was combined in jewels, used alone in many-stranded chains, woven into garments, woven in or hung upon tapestries that decked the walls of palaces. It was embroidered not only on women’s garments, but on priestly and ceremonial robes. There can hardly be a treasure in which the precious stones are not accompanied by pearls.

The soft lustre of the pearl, and its natural shape, inevitably linked it with the teardrop. Indeed, what are pearls but the crystalline tears of the angels, weeping over man’s indiscretions? The Romantics suggested that the pearl may sometimes bring tears. The materialists retorted that the tears were of vexation, shed by those that could not afford the pearls. But every morning of a clear June day, the teardrops are on every blade of grass, the glistening dew that is the brief land-pearl.

Hand in hand

All over the land

Lover leads his girl;

Merrily wedded,

Cosily bedded:

June’s for the shimmering pearl.

July: Ruby

The glowing ruby should adorn

Those who in warm July are born;

Then they will be exempt and free

From love’s doubt and anxiety.

With July, the heat of the sun begins to burn into bright flame the colors of approaching autumn. The range of red is in the ruby, from pale pink to that deep shade known as pigeon-blood. Rarest of all stones, the flawless ruby was endowed with the mightiest powers. The ancients, feeling its hidden forces, called it “the stone of life.”

The wearer of the ruby had naught but courage in his heart; he knew no fear. Well might this be, for in his mind the ruby rendered him invincible. The Russian Czar, Peter the Great, who scorned jewelry, always carried loose rubies in his pocket; he held one clenched in his fist when he gave orders for the exploits that justify his name.

Among the healing virtues ascribed to the ruby is power over ailments of the skin. Held between the palms of the hands, it is supposed to put an instant stop to internal hemorrhage. Worn against the skin a necklace of rubies, strung on silk, similarly made the skin impenetrable to sharpest blade or deadliest venom. In these days of the venomous pen and the deadly fall-out, it is interesting to note that the ruby necklace has again become popular.

To dream of rubies, one may read in the Arabic dream-books (which have many more years of authority than Freud), is to be destined to great felicity. Good news, good fortune, good health, all lie ahead.

Of those who possess a fine ruby, Sir John Mandeville says: “The fortunate owner of a brilliant ruby will live in peace and concord with all men; neither his land nor his rank can be taken from him.”

One cloud only darkens the ruby’s glow. The ruby itself at times is said to cloud; and when the gem grows dull, misfortune is on the wing. The early gemologist, Wolfgang Gabelchower, a seventeenth-century German, compiled a list of misfortunes that befell individuals after their rubies had developed a cloud. He capped his tales with the confirmation of his own sadness: he noticed that his ruby ring was clouded; the next day, of a sudden, his wife died.

Against this evidence I can only set my own observation and experience, and the traditions of a family for four generations involved in the creation of jewels: I know of no instance in which the possession of a ruby was the cause of a misfortune. Quite the contrary: a fine star ruby is a fortune in itself. And fortunate is she who knows the natal glow of a ruby.

Honest is as honest does.

All the country’s in a buzz

From squire down to booby.

Apples ripening on the farm,

Fairies keep us from all harm

Binding us with ruby.

August: Sardonyx or Peridot

Wear sardonyx, or for thee

No conjugal felicity.

The August-born, without this stone,

Must live unlovèd and alone.

The reddish brown of the August stone accords with the drying earth, and the leaves that herald the approaching turn of autumn. The sardonyx was the fifth stone in the breastplate of the High Priest of the Hebrews; among Catholics it is given honor as the stone of Saint James.

Physically, the sardonyx was used as a charm against warts, boils, and cramps. Spiritually, it was worn to turn away the evil eye and to prevent the transfer to the wearer of wicked impulses and thoughts. No witch could insinuate evil fancies into the mind guarded by this stone. And the most sardonic remark passed harmlessly by one who wore the sardonyx. On the contrary, wearing the stone made one witty, popular, and happy.

August more generously than the other months permits an alternate birthstone. This is the peridot, an olive green stone so radiant that it sends back flashes even in very dim light. It has therefore been linked with the sun, whose bright rays it ensnares to hold against future darkness.

The peridot was a frequent stone in Egyptian jewels. From that time, it has been used to protect the wearer from the dangers that lurk in darkness, though in the fifteenth century it was maintained that the peridot was effective only if set in purest gold; this combination made it a perfect night talisman.

The stone was a favorite for earrings, as its power over light was transferred to sound, to make even the lightest sound quite audible. It also helped lighten the burden of neuralgic pains.

For warding off evil spirits, however, it was worn only beaded and strung.

Worn by a man, the peridot ensured his generosity, according to countless wives who have bestowed peridot rings upon their husbands.

One of the most beautiful of all peridots is high-set in the Cathedral of Cologne. Mysteriously it shines forth in the darkness of the dome, giving a lasting memory and quiet reflections to all who have seen it.

Those born in August may be happy with sardonyx or peridot.

Long the rows of ripened grain

Along the dusty winding lane;

Do not walk alone.

Take the moonlit lovers’ path

Hand in hand; to turn Lob’s wrath

Sardonyx is the stone.

September: Sapphire

A maiden born when autumn leaves

Are rustling in September’s breeze

A sapphire on her brow should bind

To keep her keen and quick of mind.

In autumn the eyes turn upward from the bounteous earth, past the reds and yellows and browns of the restless foliage, to the endless dome of the skies. September is the month of the sapphire, which, like the heavens, ranges from a light celestial blue to the deepest velvet-like dark of indigo. It may have the lucid blue and cool brilliance of a mountain lake. Its color seems to well from endless depths, with a rich luminescence.

One of the rarest gems, the fine star sapphire, was held in repute among Egyptian astrologers, who called it the stone of the stars. Wearing a sapphire spun the stars into a favorable conjunction. In more than one section of the world of glamour today, movie “stars” carry on this tradition; sapphire jewelry, especially with a star sapphire, is their most potent talisman. In “the profession” a sapphire is an antidote for stage-fright. It builds confidence, brings success, and at the same time deflects the shafts of envy.

The sapphire has also held place in religious functioning. The Bishop of Rennes, in the twelfth century, hailed this stone as the most appropriate for ecclesiastical use: “The sapphire is like the pure sky, and mighty nature has endowed it with so great a power that it might be called the gem of gems.”

Physically, the sapphire was thought to effect various cures. The scientist von Helmhont praised its power for patients afflicted with boils. Some thought the sapphire, for ills of the eye, even better than the emerald. Thus Charles V of France had a sapphire set in gold, to which he had a handle attached, like a lorgnette, to hold to his inflamed and painful eyes. Queen Elizabeth I of England attributed more general magical powers to a sapphire that she wore and with which she never parted until her death. With it, she foiled countless plots against her life and in England’s most turbulent times lived out her full allotment of three score years and ten.

For the September-born, there is the exultation of the rustle of fall and the sweep of white clouds across a sapphire heaven.

Harvest moon beyond the hill.

Harvest happiness, and still

Watch the hearth’s soft-dying ember.

Deep the night with many stars,

Love’s the locksmith breaks all bars.

Sapphire’s for September.

October: Opal

Fresh October brings the pheasant;

Then to gather nuts is pleasant.

But this month’s babe is born for woe

And life’s vicissitudes will know

Unless an opal on her breast

Drives off these woes and keeps her blessed.

October, with its sharp contrasts, is the month of the opal. This gem may be white, or black, or of that rare and precious kind, the fire opal. In its dark greyish background are imbedded the most luminous colors of red, yellow, green, blue, and purple, that seem to shoot forth rays. The opal does not refract light, being an opaque stone; but its own colors make fine interplay with light.

The Roman historian Pliny called the opal “the captive rainbow.” The wearer of the stone, the same authority assures us, not only will be urbane and courteous but will be free from the spleen of those around. An opal, like a soft answer, turneth away wrath.

For a while, especially in the early nineteenth century, the opal was considered a stone of bad luck; it fell from favor like one dismissed by royalty. Two stories, one from life and one in legend, helped produce this aberration; human credulity completed the work.

The true-life story is that of Alphonso XII of Spain. He gave a ring, bearing a magnificent opal, to his bride. Shortly after, she succumbed to a mysterious malady. His sister, who next wore the ring, died a few days later. His sister-in-law next put the precious opal on her finger; within the month she died. Hoping to end the series of sudden deaths, Alphonso took back the ring and gave it to no one. Alphonso died. The chain was broken when his heirs placed the ring upon a statue of the Virgin.

The legend is a gruesome one recited by Sir Walter Scott in his poem Anne of Geierstein. With mystic shadowings and eerie intimations, it unfolds the story of the wearer of an opal, who shuns pious references and avoids all contact with holy water. One night a watchful person delivers an aspersion of the holy water, and the next day, where the opal-wearer had slept, there rested only a pile of ashes.

Only the unthinking, however, and the wood-knockers shrink from the beautiful opal because of such old wives’ tales. The stouthearted Empress Victoria of England, for example, was extremely fond of opals, and bestowed upon many of her friends jewels in which opals were set. There are no records of sudden deaths at her court. In 1925, at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, Queen Mary, passing a booth tended by a miner’s wife, bought a black opal. It is a stone worthy of queenly favor.

Far from being a sinister omen, the opal is a stone of good fortune. It is especially sought, indeed, by fortunetellers. Some of them gaze upon it to induce that trance-like state in which the future spreads before one like a great mirage; better than a crystal ball are the incessant interplay of colors and the endless iridescence of the stone. An opal on a ring increasingly gives the wearer a view of the future. Unlike the man who considered augurs boring, I confess to a keen interest in what makes them tick, or click. Usually their powers are linked to a special stone, which, like as not, is an opal. The famous European telepath, Eric Jan Hanussen, for example, believed implicitly in the prognostic power of the stone. “Anyone could do what I do,” he once said to me, “if he had my opal.”

Certainly the opal is auspicious for the October-born.

Light the fire; roast the crab.

Though she dodge the while you grab,

Kiss the maid still sober.

Hard the day’s work you have done,

Who would grudge an evening’s fun?—

Opal in October.

November: Topaz

Who first comes to this world below

With drear November’s fog and snow,

Should prize the topaz’ amber hue,

Emblem of friends and lovers true.

When nights are growing long and tempers short, when one seeks the consolations of philosophy (or memories of Florida) to store against the cold, November is the month of the topaz. This beautiful stone is at its best when honey-blond.

The topaz was a holy stone, signifying Saint Matthew. Two of the popes, Clement VI and Gregory II, possessed a topaz of great beauty, to which were attributed great healing powers. This stone gave the faithful a further impetus to make the pilgrimage to Rome from the far corners of the world so that their health might return to them with the blessing and the touch of this hallowed stone.

Even on less sacrosanct hands, the topaz was esteemed for its many therapeutic virtues. From earliest times, in accordance with the principles of sympathetic magic, the yellow color of the stone made it ideal for the cure of those afflicted with jaundice and other ailments of the liver. As the November stone, it was used in the Middle Ages to cure the contagions that begin to spread with the onset of cold weather. Its soothing color added it to the stones that were esteemed good for the eyes; the topaz was moistened with wine and laid upon aching eyelids. It also, many felt, cured diseases of the mind and helped the distraught to regain their mental balance.

The birthday wearer of the topaz is likely to be an upright soul, with good judgment fortified by wisdom. Faith and a deep spirit of charity are within its bestowal, gifts important in November’s shortening days and chilly blasts. It is clear that one of the most gracious of all stones is the topaz.

The nights are growing dark and long,

Bitter is the wind and strong,

With a wailful moan.

Let your mirth the time beguile,

Meet life with a cheery smile

And a topaz stone.

December: Turquoise

If cold December gave you birth,

The month of snow and ice and mirth,

Place on your hand a turquoise blue,

Success will bless whate’er you do.

December, the last month of the dying year, chill with the shivering threat of its dying, needs a great virtue to preserve it till it is overtaken by the touch of January and the promise of the new year. This great virtue the ancients found in the turquoise.

Among the ancient peoples of many lands, it was the common practice to bury turquoises with the bodies of their monarchs and their chiefs, to tide them over the pitchy paths of transfer and bear them safely to the new world and the new life beyond the tomb. In the pyramids of Egypt, in the Aztec tombs, in the mounds of Mexico, jewels and beads of turquoise abound.

At the beginning of life in this world, too, the turquoise is welcomed; there is still no better good-luck gift to a newborn child than a necklace of turquoise beads. It is significant that December is the birth month of the Holy Child, for whose nativity the gifts no doubt included turquoise.

Since the turquoise is comparatively soft among stones, it can be readily engraved; magic inscriptions, charms, and prayers have been cut upon it, to add their power to its auspicious glow. The turquoise is thus a protective stone. December being a precipitous month, when snow and ice are prelude to a fall, with hillsides hazardous and even a level walk a place where one is prone to slip, the turquoise is an excellent talisman against falling. In fact, the saddles of horses have been set with turquoise, to keep the steed surefooted on journey or in battle. St. George was secure against a fall in his battle with the dragon; paintings and tapestries of the valiant saint show a turquoise in the hilt of his great sword.

Opaque though it is, the turquoise, because of its bright coloring, outshines most other stones. Its protective value may extend even to material things. It was the Hindu Tagore who arose from his pondering of less mundane concerns to report that, to ensure enormous wealth, one should look long at the new moon, then instantly fix one’s eyes on a turquoise.

15. QUEEN ELIZABETH II. Her Majesty is wearing the sash and star of the Order of the Garter, a necklace given to her by the Nizam of Hyderabad and a diamond bracelet which was a gift from the Duke of Edinburgh. Her tiara of diamonds and pearls has been worn by queens of England since Queen Victoria. (Command portrait by Dorothy Wilding, courtesy of the British Information Services)

16. PEARL AND BAGUETTE DIAMOND EARCLIPS. Designed to minimize large ears. The subdued sparkle of the baguette diamonds makes them suitable for both daytime and evening. This jewel was honored with the Diamond U.S.A. Award.

17. DEEP SEA ALGAE. The earclips (only one is shown at the left) and pin (shown here ⅞ of actual size) of chased 18 karat gold with ornaments of large diamonds were inspired by deep-sea plants. Their distinctive character is heightened when seen against a solid color.

18, 18A. DOUBLE ROSE CLIP. Two wild roses with their foliage form a brilliant corsage of diamonds and platinum. The two flowers are different in size and detail of design. The pin can be separated into two individual clips, providing a variety of possibilities for enhancing adornment. At the left, the smaller of the blossoms—the flower not yet fully opened, the leaves still curled in—is worn on a necklace of round and baguette diamonds.

19. DIAMOND AND PEARL LEAVES. A set of brooch and earclips suitable for almost all occasions. The delicate, pierced design, signifying the veins of a leaf, has both airiness and depth. When the earclips, similar in shape to the pin, are worn close to the cheek, the pearls add lustre to the skin.

20. PEARL AND DIAMOND NECKLACE. Wild roses of diamonds divide the three strands of pearls in front from the two strands in back. The clasp is hidden in one of the roses. From the collection of Mrs. Cummins Catherwood.

21. PEARL RING. The delicate lustre of a pearl is highlighted by six marquise diamonds.

22. QUEEN GERALDINE OF ALBANIA. The Queen’s coronation tiara, made of diamonds and platinum, shows the royal crest of the “Ram of Skanderbeg” held by a bandeau of Albanian wildflowers. Her diamond and ruby pendant earclips accentuate her violet-blue eyes; her Rivière is of alternating round and baguette diamonds.

23. DIAMOND NECKLACE. A diamond and platinum necklace in a youthful, flower design. The center motif is formed by an emerald-cut diamond. This necklace can, with the aid of a simple device, be worn as a tiara. From the collection of Mrs. Theodore Newhouse.

24. DIAMONDS CAUGHT IN A NET. This earclip and clip ensemble in platinum and diamonds received the Diamond U.S.A. Award.

25. NECKLACE FOR A BRIDE. Motifs of marquise, baguette and round diamonds form a delicate pattern of orange blossoms for this completely flexible necklace. Recipient of the Diamond U.S.A. Award, the original of this design is in the collection of Mme. A. Jaglom.

26, 27. DIAMOND PINCUSHION ORNAMENT. A versatile clip, it is seen at the left gathering a scarf about the hair. It is designed particularly for evening wear. The same clip, right, is worn on a neck chain.

28. MARIANNE OSTIER. To compliment her red hair and fair complexion, the author is wearing a necklace of three strands of emerald beads with two diamond and platinum motifs; matching diamond and emerald earclips; and a diamond and emerald dome-shaped ring.

For less extravagant desires, the gem will exercise its most beneficent influence if worn upon the index or the little finger. The December-born may find a new birth of good fortune with the turquoise.

Short the days, the cold spreads wide;

Be there merry Christmastide!

Blessed things remember.

Old year dying,

New hopes flying:

Turquoise for December.

Signs of the Stars

There are some who regard the month of their birth with less concern than the star, the constellation, under which they were born. They look into the heavens for the beasts that prowl the sky in the outspread forms of the stars. The ancients, and all astrologers since, have discerned a close connection between us in this world and the “animals” in the sky. For, though a few other forms have slipped in, the circle of stars that mark the year is called the zodiac, from Greek zodion, which means little animal, from zoon, animal. The zodiac is the zoo of the sky, whose beasts “beset us round.”

The Zodiac

The round of the year begins with the springtime. Our starting the calendar with January is a new-fangled notion, as can still be seen in the names of the last three months. The names October, November and December mean, respectively, the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth month. The year used to begin with March, the opening of spring.

Jewels and talismans have long been wrought with the signs of the zodiac. It is better, of course, to wear a ring with only the particular sign under which you were born. But the signs have been divided into cycles, and for each of the three cycles within a sign there is a special stone. Wearing this stone, especially with the sign carved upon it, increases the charm tenfold. In this fashion the special powers of the animal that rules the period, instead of opposing, will enter into and re-enforce the virtues of the wearer. Unfortunately, different astrologers have suggested different stones; but one who has never failed me believes in the list that I present, for its own values, each under its cycle and sign.

Aries, the Ram

The signs of the year begin with the ruttish male of springtime, the season of fertility.

Taurus, the Bull

More deliberately, but with tremendous power, the year surges on.

Gemini, the Twins

Castor and Pollux take the sky, twin sons of Leda and Jupiter as the swan.

Cancer, the Crab

And now the year moves backward toward the dark.

Leo, the Lion

Patience lashes its tail before the harvest.

Virgo, the Virgin

As this sign approaches, poets gather their powers. Shakespeare and his rollicking fellows sat in the Mermaid Tavern,

Pledging with content smack

The Mermaid in the Zodiac.

The slow ripening draws toward the ever wondrous birth.

Libra, the Scales

Balance the harvest of the moving year.

Scorpio, the Scorpion

Armor of the spirit blunts the sting in the tail of the season.

Sagittarius, the Archer

Aim well through the dark night, for the dawn shall turn.

Capricorn, the Goat

Leap up, heart, with glad resounding as light is born anew!

Aquarius, the Water Carrier

Out of me come all things that live beneath the rainbow.

Pisces, the Fishes

Abundance of untold treasure glints from the depths of the seven seas.

As the zodiac sets a ring around the heavens, so the zodiacal ring around one’s finger sets the sign of heaven in one’s fate. If one does not have a special jewel wrought with one’s astrological sign, it may find fit place as a charm on a bangle bracelet.

Cassius, in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, may exclaim:

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings—

but every man is born under a lucky star, and borne along with the virtues of the stars’ configurations, if only he can make it shine upon his fortune. It should be remembered (as Milton records in Paradise Lost) that God smiled upon the angels when they came to calculate the stars. If the astrologer has cast one’s nativity, one then may have it fashioned in a jewel.

PART TWO

The Art
of Feminine Adornment

CHAPTER 4
The Art of Feminine Adornment

From head to foot milady is concerned with jewels. Her crowning glory, her hair, is today, however, left largely to display its own lustrous beauty in coiffures carefully designed for the individual taste and figure. Hat ornaments of elaborate jewels have long ceased to be popular. By the beginning of this century even the essential hatpin had been reduced to utilitarian simplicity, a round piece of jet or colored stone atop a long rod of steel which, with its sharp point, not only held the hat in place but made a handy weapon of defense.

How much can be worn in the hair depends upon its styling. The chignon, or other knot behind, permits the use of comb or ornamental pin. The most elaborate of the combs, looking best on a tall woman with dark hair, is the Spanish comb, consisting of a few teeth below a large crest of shell often encrusted with stones. Less favored, but attractive with more exotic types, is the Japanese pin, a long rod of carved ivory or of black lacquered wood decorated in colors and usually worn in a pair.

Few women, outside of the nobility on state occasions, wear the metal bands set or peaked with gems, called indiscriminately diadems or tiaras. Such a band of precious metals and stones, worn by a prince or noble of high rank, is the coronet. The monarch himself, as an emblem of sovereignty, wears a more elaborate circlet or head covering, the royal crown.

Royal Crowns of Britain

Most famous of the royal crowns are those of the British Empire, three for the monarch, two for his queen. First of the three is the reputed crown of Edward the Confessor, which was destroyed by the Commonwealth. It was reproduced by Charles II and, with its inner Cap of Maintenance, has been worn at all the English Coronations since 1661. It is of “massie golde” and weighs four pounds. Since neither this, nor the Imperial Crown of State, may leave the British Isles, a special Imperial Crown of India, the third royal crown, was made for the investiture of George V at Delhi in 1911.

By far the most magnificent of the three royal crowns is the Imperial Crown of State. This may officially be made anew for each new monarch, but the crown that showed the glory of Queen Victoria in 1839 has with few modifications been used by all her successors. This great crown is adorned with historic treasures of the centuries. The great pearl earrings of Elizabeth I are nested here; the sapphire from Edward the Confessor’s Coronation Ring; the Stuart Sapphire, an oval an inch and a half by an inch; the Black Prince’s ruby, large as a hen’s egg. Although the Star of Africa, the world’s largest cut diamond, a pear-shaped brilliant of about 530 carats, crowns the head of the royal sceptre, two other brilliants cut from the same rough diamond adorn the Imperial Crown. One, the cushion-shaped diamond in the band, below the Black Prince’s ruby, weighs 309³⁄₁₆ carats; the other, of 96 carats, is to the side of the band. Literally thousands of other precious stones, including smaller diamonds of various cuts and sizes, make the British Imperial Crown of State, at one time signifying dominion over the most widespread of all empires, the most imposing of all crowns.

Everywoman’s Queen

Far from the Imperial Crowns though she may be, every woman is the monarch of her own beauty. When she sits before a mirror, a woman sees both the material of beauty and the artist who must work with that material. And the first thing an artist must learn is the potentialities of the material.

An honest appraisal of what looks forth from the glass is the beginning of its improvement. Nature has given few women features without flaw; and there is little of personal charm in the prize “perfection” of professional beauty in the face of the beauty-contest “queen.” Even the most beautiful of women can have that beauty enhanced. Cosmetics are no more than a base upon which jewelry spreads its charm. Jewels are the oldest and most proven help to beauty.

And the most lasting. The precious stones that Cleopatra wore for the admiration of three monarchs still hold their pristine fire, and no doubt sparkle on the throat and hand of some fair lady of today. If the cost of a jewel is measured against the duration of its usefulness—even apart from its beauty, its small bulk, and its ready possibility of resale—it is clear that there is no better investment. Nor is there any monotony in a precious stone. It takes new glow in various lights. A little ingenuity will suggest variations in its use. And as fashions change, the permanent values in the stone itself can be displayed in new settings.

A Stone’s Best Setting

The most permanent aspect of the setting of a precious stone is, of course, the wearer herself. When asked for his wisest counsel, the old sage replied: Know thyself. As a later poet put it, “The proper study of mankind is man.” This also holds for woman. A full and frank estimate of the physical features must precede any proper attempt to adorn them.

Consider, for instance, the bone structure. Heavy bones are usually associated with wide shoulders, square cheek bones and strong, pronounced wrists, whereas small bones usually mark a slight build, with slender fingers and small wrists. A woman with wide cheek bones should naturally wear earclips and necklaces that look heavier, to balance her appearance. This proportion should be observed throughout her jewelry wardrobe, with heavier and higher-built rings, bulkier bracelets, larger brooches and clips.

A woman of heavier build emphasizes this fact when she wears a tiny ring and a clip that looks lost on her bosom. On the other hand, a petite person may easily seem overpowered, even dwarfed, by a massive set of jewelry. She will be fittingly adorned with light and airy pieces, with the stones set individually in a dainty style.

Types of Women

The basic choice, then, depends first upon the woman’s own characteristics. Can she call herself the “tailored type”, or “petite”, or “sophisticated”? Within each of these general groupings the next consideration is the contour of the face. This may be round or oval. Yet there are, of course, countless variations within and between these types, and each woman should remember that her characteristics build up into a distinct and unique personality. It is that unique and precious whole which is herself that each woman should explore, so as to know her potentialities and her needs.

The Major Metals

Before settling down to consider details of individual jewels, there are two more general aspects of jewelry that may be pondered: the metal and the design. Gold, especially of eighteen karat, has come back into favor. It is extremely becoming to many complexions for wear during the day and, provided that it is set with at least a few diamonds, it is appropriate as well for the more formal jewels of the evening. The whiteness of platinum, however, has made it a more favored setting for diamonds. In this connection the new metal palladium must not be overlooked; its shimmery satin finish makes a superb background for precious stones. It is lighter than platinum.

The Basic Designs

The most general division of designs distinguishes the ornamental or abstract, and the floral. A tailored type will be drawn to and embellished by the ornamental design. The petite person will find that a flower motif enhances her essential femininity. The sophisticated person may well employ a combination of the ornamental and the floral, seeking style from the ornament, softness and depth from the flower motif. She can venture further, too, toward extremes of style and color.

Every piece of jewelry should of course be tried on before it is selected. However well it looks in its individual box, in the arranged setting of the jeweler’s window, or on the velvet cushion in the store, the important question is how it looks upon the one who wears it. It should be tested against the background of a dark dress, in the direct rays of daylight and in the soft artificial light under which it will usually be worn.

CHAPTER 5
The Earclip

The Supreme Importance of the Earclip

Among the various articles of adornment that a woman can acquire, the one that can make the most startling changes in her appearance is the earclip. Properly chosen, earclips can do more to bring out a woman’s best features than any other jewel, and one can play more tricks with a pair of earclips than with one’s make-up.

A few generations back, the ears were beneath consideration; that is, they were beneath the hairdo. Daguerreotypes of our grandmothers show coiffures that completely cover the ears. The “problem of the ear lobe,” that least attractive feature of the face, did not arise. But when the horse-and-buggy days were succeeded by our time of streamlined cars and jet planes, hair styles were also streamlined. The contour of the face is thus more fully revealed, and the function of the earclip is to give that contour distinction and style.

Earrings Through the Ages

In earlier periods when the hair was piled high on the head, or left to flow behind, the earring was also prominent. Indeed, the history of adornment might be summed up in the story of the jeweled appendages attached to the ear.

Men were adorned, in earlier days, fully as much as women. They wore not only finger rings but earrings. At one of the oldest known cities, Ur of the Chaldees, a gold earring has been unearthed from the sarcophagus of a monarch who ruled 4,700 years ago. The burial place of the Pharaoh Tutankhamen, dug up in 1922, contained amber earrings. Ancient Assyrian kings, with their hierarchy of priests and their cohorts of soldiers, are shown on ancient carvings—all with adornments for the ears. When Moses was up in the clouds on Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments on tables of stone, Aaron in the valley, preparing to make gods for the people, said unto them: “Break off the golden earrings, which are in the ears of your wives, of your sons....”

As the Roman Republic grew effeminate with wealth and luxury, earrings were more popular among men than women; no less a “he-man” than Julius Caesar himself brought back to repute and fashion the use of rings in the ears of men. In Persia of the thirteenth century, the vogue was so popular that the Sassanian kings had engravings of themselves, wearing their earrings, set as signet stones upon their fingers.

Elizabethan England found earrings tossed with the heads of Italianate dandiprats. Shakespeare’s Othello wore them, and to our own day the stage Moor (as well as the cinema pirate) wears a gold loop in at least one ear. But through the next century the English macaronis (fops who are mocked in our “Yankee Doodle” song) continued to flaunt earrings upon the Puritan public. Charles I of England went to his execution in 1649 disdainfully dressed in all his finery, including a ring in his right ear. Perhaps it was the lopping of that royal head that helped to end the fashion for men.

Women, however, have continued to wear earrings to enhance their beauty. At times, when other jewels were growing oversized, the earrings also grew enormous. In Sumer, over four thousand years ago, Queen Shubad wore great golden half-moons. Women in ancient Phoenicia vied with one another in the size of their earrings. Old Etruscan ear ornaments bore little boxes for perfume or for charms. In the fourth century B.C. the Greek hetaerae wore cupids on their ears. Queen Victoria, twenty-three centuries later, saw the vogue of gold-rimmed cameos close against the ears, from which hung larger cameos. But whether it be the stalwart Bahri matron in Central Africa who slips through her ear lobe half a hundred separate loops of elephant hair, or the proud Zulu maiden who has stretched her lobes until an ivory tube half an inch in diameter is pushed through, or the dainty city lass with a pearl clipped close upon each ear—the earring is an almost universal jewel, worn as an adjunct to human beauty.

The Significance of the Ears

Perhaps the prevalence of the earrings indicates that something is wrong with the ear. It is an essential organ, well placed and well shaped for its function, but aesthetically a bit obtrusive. For note that the ears, while they frame the face, are amenable to none of the usual resources of cosmetics. The hair, in addition to being neatly styled, can be variously tinted. Proper application of powder and color can seem to alter the shape or the length of the nose. The cheeks can not only be colored but by deft use of powder and rouge can be given a different outline. The eyes can be accented with color; they can be made more naive or more beguiling. The lips can be made to seem smaller, more sweetly innocent, more bold. But when all the make-up skills have been applied, the ears remain unaltered.

And yet the look of the ears may make or mar the whole appearance. The choice of earclips, it should be clear, must depend not upon the attractiveness of the jewel but upon the effect it has in ameliorating the facial features. Earclips can play up a small, dainty nose, or minimize a large one. Earclips can, according as she chooses them, make a woman look younger or older, smarter, more sophisticated, or more simple and sweet—and always prettier.

The Earclip and the Facial Contour

Other jewels may with some degree of safety be purchased from the box. A ring, even a brooch, will not alter much from the way it looks on the velvet of a counter or the satin of a case. But an earclip becomes part of the contour of a face. It must be seen, as others will see it, from various angles, profile and full face. Since no two ears, no two sides of the same face, are exactly alike, both clips should be tried on, and their effect carefully examined. They should be looked at without a hat, so that the whole sweep of the head may be considered. Conversely, when hats are being tried on, one’s favorite earclips should be worn to judge their effect with the contemplated hat. However large or tiny—a band of velvet or a fluff of feathers—the hat and the clips should complement one another.

On some faces, at certain angles, there is a space between the earlobe and the cheek. As this breaks the harmony of line, it should be covered by the clip. In such cases, the earclip should be worn as close as possible to the face. If the cheekbones are large or high, suggesting hollows below, a large earclip, properly placed, will seem to fill out the face. Heavy earclips could be set in palladium, the lightest of the major jewel metals. Sometimes a piquant contour can be created, as when a soft hat is tilted down over one ear, with the earclip worn only in the uncovered ear. The second clip may then be worn on the jacket lapel or on the dress.

The Shape of Your Face

The general pattern of the face is what must be first considered in the selection of an earclip. An oval face usually goes with a longer neck; therefore the eye of the viewer should be tempted to minimize the distance between the ear lobe and the shoulder. Dangling earclips, or clips with pendants, will produce this effect—provided they are not too wide, for width in an earclip makes the face look narrower. And clips that are too long make one look older. But the oval face will appear chic with a pendant clip, with stones of different colors and sizes which, against a round face, would seem vulgar or overdone. If the face tends to be long and thin, it will be rounded by earclips broad at the base, tapering toward and perhaps curving around the upper rim of the ear.

A round face, contrariwise, calls for earclips that can be worn close. This ensures a youthful appearance. Large, semicircular earclips will look well, or those with clusters of tiny flowers, grouped as a bouquet. Tiny stones set on prongs, as in pincushions, or sunbursts, will provide a rich frame to the round face.

If the chin tends to be heavy, the earclips should be accented with color and have an upswept look. Long earclips are permissible, if not thin but rich-looking and full. In this case, however, they should be worn only with full décolleté or strapless gown.

Obviously, small earclips should be avoided on the round face; they will make it seem broader and the features heavier. Similarly, little bowknots will seem childish. Any design that merely follows the lines of the ear lobe will accentuate the roundness, which properly chosen earclips will not emphasize but use to full advantage.

Details of the Face

Other aspects of the features should be considered in the selection of earclips. Moles or other minor blemishes may be counteracted by proper distribution of color accents. Scars from cosmetic and other operations can be cleverly hidden by correctly designed earclips. They may make a hearing aid completely invisible.

A dull or colorless complexion can be brightened with multicolored earclips and necklaces. The colors of the precious stones will reflect and shed their glow upon the skin. Bold colors will lend their drama to the face.

On eyeglasses, all color should be shunned. Rhinestone-studded or multicolored frames call attention to themselves. The purpose of eyeglasses is purely functional; they should be left unobtrusive, not made competitors of the clip.

Whatever one’s complexion, it can be embellished by earclips of appropriate gems. Almost any complexion, however, will be flattered by the soft red glow of the ruby or the sparkle of the diamond. If a woman—because it is her birthstone or for other reasons of taste or sentiment—is partial to a stone that does not suit her complexion, it can be joined with rubies and diamonds so that it will do lovely things for the skin.

The larger the earclip, within the proportions of the head, the smaller seems the nose. But a woman with a large or pronounced nose should avoid upswept and backswept earclips which follow the line of the ear lobe; these will stress the vertical lines of the face and accentuate the very characteristics that should be minimized. Dome-shaped earclips so worn that, profile in the mirror, they point forward at the top, will underplay the prominence of the nose. This simple trick of bringing the earclips forward will bring the countenance into proper harmony.

Versatile Earclips

An effective earclip, adjustable to many contours, is one that rims both the top and the bottom of the ear. One of the jewels with which I won the “Diamond U.S.A. Award” was such a pair of earclips. It consists of two crescent moons of baguette diamonds flanked by pearls. These are held in place by a platinum wire that disappears behind the ear. The crescents are of slightly different sizes. The clip is reversible, so that the larger crescent may be worn at either top or bottom, whichever arrangement gives a more graceful contour, according to the hat, the hairdo and the proportions of the face. Many patterns of such reversible double clips can be devised.

The Hair and the Earclip

Especially to be considered is the harmony of the earclip and the hair. To those who enjoy a short hair styling, the earclip adds softness and helps establish the contour of the face. It is less an adjunct than a completion of the coiffure. Those who prefer a chignon will find that flower earclips tend to soften the severity of the style.

The Brunette

Medium brown or brunette hair suggests earclips of pearls and diamonds worn close to the face. The creamy lustre of the pearl and the sparkling brilliance of the diamond form a delectable contrast to the brunette coloring. Turquoises and rubies, as well as corals, are also becoming, close to the face as color accents to the skin. For the less formal occasion, topazes—which run the gamut of color from the golden yellow of honey to the reddish brown of Madeira wine—may work magic for the dark-eyed girl. If not exaggerated, a gypsy style earclip may add an exotic touch to the brunette. This must, however, be kept within proper size, and carefully examined from profile to guard against an extreme effect.

If one’s complexion is light, aquamarines will be attractive set in platinum or gold. To be avoided are dark sapphires with their colorings of deepest blue, amethysts of the velvety purple hue and garnets with their deep red cast and undertones of brown. If there are compelling reasons for wearing clips that contain any of these gems, they should, by all means, be set in gold and offset with diamonds. A few diamonds, however small, sprinkled around another gem will add to the general effect of beauty.

The Darkhaired

For the black-haired woman with blue or grey eyes, the most becoming stones are aquamarine in red gold or golden topaz in yellow gold—both of these combined with sapphires. If the eyes are brown, the aquamarines should be set in platinum and worn with rubies.

The Redhead

Those who have red hair and a fair complexion will find that the most becoming colors for the ears are the translucent green of the emerald, the opaque green of the jade, the brilliant blue of the sapphire and the various shades of the amethyst, from lilac to deep purple. Brown and yellow colors, as in the topaz and red gold, are to be shunned. Pearls may be worn, but only if the lustre is pink. Other pearls will appear chalky against a fair complexion and will not complement a rosy coloring. For the background of the colored stones, it is best to choose a light-colored gold or platinum.

The Blonde

For those with fair skin and platinum hair, rubies, amethysts and aquamarines will do wonders. Pearls, alone or in combination with diamonds, will enhance the soft shades of the hair. Diamond earclips, especially set in loops and floral designs, will provide a regal look.

If the hair is blonde, sapphires, aquamarines, topazes, turquoises and rubies will underline its golden hue. With blue, grey or hazel eyes, deep sapphires are particularly effective. With darker eyes, mixed rubies and sapphires accord, or topaz set in yellow gold. Pearls should be cream-colored to do their best for a blonde. In the designs and settings, the plain metallic look of gold and silver should be avoided; little of any metal should be seen and colored stones should be dispersed throughout the earclip.

As the Hair Turns Grey

The transition to grey hair is most pleasantly accompanied along the line of the ears, by using the same earclips with the addition of diamonds. With full grey hair, diamonds alone are superb, though if the complexion is light some color will still prove charming. Best would be amethyst with turquoise set in platinum, or Madeira topaz with sapphires set in gold.

Important Considerations in Selecting Earclips

Women who are slender and petite should select earclips with an airy appearance. An earclip can be large, yet still be light and airy. Such a clip may be designed of pierced metal, lacy and delicate, or of twisted gold, platinum or palladium. Long diamond earclips are appropriate only for formal occasions and for evening wear.

It must be stressed that earclips should be tried on before they are finally selected. Some women, admiring a pair of clips on a friend, mistakenly assume that what is beautiful on one person will likewise be an adornment for another. Not only each countenance but each pair of ears is different. Large lobes may be covered by attaching the clips at a different angle. Shaking the head when trying them on will indicate the necessity for adjustment if the clips tend to slide to a different position.

Because no two ear lobes are exactly the same, both clips must be tried on. What is too tight on one ear may be too loose on the other. If the difference is great, the jeweler can make a tiny mark by which the clips may be distinguished.

Careful testing, apart from the question of fit, is particularly important when the earclips are ready-made. The designer in such a case had no single individual in mind, but a simple adjustment may turn a routine clip into one that establishes itself as a personal adjunct to beauty.

An earclip may sometimes, by an invisible attachment on the back, be converted into a hair ornament or a clip to be worn on the dress. Earclips with pendants can be so fashioned that the pendants may be changed or the hanging part removed for less formal occasions. For any occasion, from a business engagement to the most formal function, earclips are an essential and most effective part of a woman’s jewels.

CHAPTER 6
The Necklace

The Symbolism of the Necklace

The necklace is the most conspicuous of adornments. The earclip is more subtle, because it performs a double function: it is to be noticed for its own beauty; at the same time, quietly and without advertising this aspect of its role, it helps to shape the contour of the head and to bring out a radiant glow in the countenance. In the necklace, the importance of these functions is reversed. The jewel worn around the neck can play a part in moulding the personality and enhancing its highlights—it must always be chosen with these things in mind, but its major purpose is display.

Because of its prominence, the necklace from early times has been a symbol of high office. It was worn by kings and was reserved for those to be specially honored, as soldiers returning from victorious campaigns. It is still part of the ceremonial regalia of priests of various religions.

The universal employment of the necklace as an article of feminine adornment has led to its almost complete withdrawal from the masculine wardrobe. For formal occasions, however, it is still used to designate rank or honorary station, in some variation of the wide band that goes around the neck and comes down to, or is fastened at, the belt. In the United States, for example, the President signalizes the bravest soldiers by placing around their necks the Congressional Medal of Honor.

For most of its uses, the necklace is donned without any sense of this long symbolic history. Yet it may not be too imaginative to find an echo of this significance in the romantic gesture with which a man places a beautiful necklace around the neck of his beloved.

The General Effect

Being the most prominent article of personal adornment, the necklace requires considerate care. Poorly chosen for the particular individual—no matter how attractive the jewel in itself—it may make a woman seem overdressed. Stones of the wrong color may make her skin look sallow. A heedlessly selected style may emphasize wrinkles in the neck. With proper thought, however, the right necklace, well fitted, not only presents its own beauty but adds youth and beauty to the chinline and neck of the wearer.

The saying that a woman is as old as she looks gains further truth from the powers of jewelry to contribute to the color of the skin and the lines of the body. The lines that curve upward from the shoulders to the head have much to do with the general impression of youthfulness, vigor and health, or of drab weariness, fatigue, and age. And it is along these lines that even the most beautiful woman draws on the aid of the necklace and seeks not just the beautiful but the beautifying jewel.

The Diamond Necklace

The sparkle of the diamond necklace suits any complexion and enhances the glow of any skin. Unfortunately, its use is restricted to special occasions, which alas too seldom shed their brilliance upon one’s crowded year. At opening night of the Horse Show or the Opera, the diamond necklace is worn, as at the season’s Charity Ball or a Gala Concert. It is appropriate, also, at formal receptions and, of course, should always accompany a woman on a trip abroad.

The Rivière

One of the most attractive, dressiest and most timeless styles in the diamond necklace is that single strand of diamonds, the straight line necklace, known as the rivière, or river of light. Whether the diamonds are uniform, that is, all of equal size, or graduated around the neck with the largest centered in front, nothing should be allowed to interfere with the incomparable beauty of the gems. No medallions of precious metal should be allowed between. The one concern of the jeweler should be to achieve the flowing sequence of perfect solitaires, in one accordant interplay, a cascading river of brilliance and sparkle.

Care must be taken with the fitting of the rivière so that none of the diamonds will overturn when it is worn. An expert craftsman knows that the first requirement is the pre-shaping of the mountings, before the stones are set, to conform not only to the shape but also to the movements of the neck. A painstaking jeweler may make a plaster cast of the lovely neck and shoulders which are to receive the rivière; upon this cast he can form the rounding jewel. Every good jeweler possesses some of the skills of the sculptor.

The round diamond solitaire rivière is, beyond all compare, the most brilliant and regal of necklaces. The fireworks of light, constantly flashing from gem to gem, echoing and re-echoing their sparkle, give to the skin a soft and velvety glow.

The Baguette Necklace

Another beautiful diamond necklace, almost as attractive as the round solitaires, is one made of baguette diamonds. It is both more sedate in mood and more modern in style. The baguette necklace, moreover, while it is beautiful in its sole array of diamonds, may also be worn with further adornment—a diamond motif or clip or tassel, of which more will be said in connection with other necklaces.

The rivière necklace, round or baguette, is often made so that it can be separated to form two bracelets. It is thus a flexible jewel and can be used on the arm when the informality of the occasion would make the all-diamond necklace less appropriate.

The Pearl Necklace

Although the diamond necklace, especially the unsurpassed rivière, is worn only on the most special occasions, there is hardly ever an occasion on which a properly chosen pearl necklace is out of place. The pearl necklace is the most beloved as well as the most versatile of all such jewels. The simplest tailored suit will be graced by a tailored choker, or by one or two strands of well-matched pearls. The pearl necklace can be worn on a sweater, a high-neck dress, a V-neck dress, a low-cut gown. I have seen one, though I do not recommend it, worn with a bikini; and one, doubled about the ankle, taking the place of the thin “slave chain” of gold.

The pearl necklace looks proper on a simple lass in her teens, and it graces the frail or fuller charms of an elderly lady. While it is thus general in its range of use, it is by no means indiscriminate in its bounty; the shade and the size of pearls must be carefully selected in order for their harmony to enhance the wearer.

The Colors of the Pearl

There are innumerable shades of pearls from which to choose. They vary from chalk white through rose pink to dark cream. Some of them are greyish or brownish; these may be becoming if suited to the complexion. The general whiteness we first associate with the pearl is overlaid with these other tones in softest lustre.

The simplest way of selecting the tint of pearl that will add its glow to the complexion is to lay the strand against the inside of the wrist. Each strand should be moved slowly back and forth and compared with the skin tones. Usually one lustre of the pearls, one particular tint, will bring out a velvety glow on the skin. This is the proper complementary shade for the complexion. In making such a choice, it is well to take counsel from the trained observation of a reliable jeweler.

For the Brunette

For a brunette, or someone with well-tanned skin, care must be taken lest the pearls be too white. This will cause a dulling of the glow of the skin. The wrist test described above will reveal that, for the brunette, cream-colored pearls are the best.

For the Blonde and the Redhead

Either a blonde or a redhead, with a fair complexion, will find the virtues of her skin enhanced by pearls of a pinkish hue. Especially on a blonde, pearls can be most attractive.

For platinum hair, however, more than the complexion must be considered. In such cases, the wrist test is not enough. The pearls should be laid against the hair, as though to form a head-band. Usually platinum hair will accord with pearls of a greyish-white tint.

Properly chosen pearls will withstand the variations in skin shades due to the seasons. The fairer skin of winter, the summer’s burn or tan, do not affect the underlying pigmentation which harmonizes with the lustre of the pearl.

A woman gives time and thought to the selection of a harmonious shade of lipstick or nail polish; she should take more pains with the selection of the more permanent and more important necklace of pearls.

For a Long Neck

A woman with a long neck will find that its length seems diminished if the necklace is of the choker type, fitted very closely into the nape of the neck. It should be of uniform size all around, not tapering down towards the back. If the neck is thin, it may be made to seem quite attractive in a chiffon scarf with the necklace over it.

For a Wide Neck

A tapering necklace, loosely worn, with a prominent center pearl, will tend to pull together the lines of a neck that is wide. A double strand necklace, hanging with some space between the strands to make it airier, will also counteract the sense of width. For a slimming effect, a tight necklace should be avoided.

Large beads will make a neck look smaller but must not be worn if the neck is both full and short With a short neck, a long string of pearls or beads may be draped loosely over a dress with a low neckline, without collar or scarf. If the strands are properly arranged, close together or loose as the neck demands, more than one strand may be worn no matter how the neck is fashioned.

Size of Pearls

The size of the pearl is also to be considered. On a long neck, it is wiser to have the pearls all of one size. On a wider neck, they will be more attractive if they are graduated, smaller ones at the back and around the sides, then growing toward a large central pearl at the front.

Note that with a young girl large pearls are not in good taste. A string of smaller, well chosen and well matched pearls is impeccable and charming.

The Proper Stringing of Pearls

Once a fine strand of pearls has been selected, it should be strung so as to gain full advantage from its own lustre. The glow of pearls is enhanced by their reflection; the closer they are to one another, the more beautiful they all look. Knots, sometimes fashioned between pearls to strengthen their stringing, should never be made in the front of the necklace. But if this is done, for reasons of safety, the pearl stringer must take care to make the knots extremely small and very close with no gaps showing between the pearls. The rhythm of the well-matched pearl necklace with the highlights moving from one pearl to the next should not be disturbed by improper stringing. When a string breaks, it is virtually always near the clasp; knots, therefore, should be made for the five pearls on each side of the clasp. This is usually enough for safety and does not interfere with the beauty of the jewel.

The Necklace Clasp

Whatever the necklace, it must have a clasp. For a single strand, the clasp should be small and worn in the back. A large clasp is apt to turn or become entangled in the hair.

With a pearl necklace, a clasp of a colored stone, such as a ruby or an emerald, will make an effective complement, highlighting the pearls; but for any necklace a diamond clasp offers perfect harmony. A frequently available diamond to use for such a clasp may be found nestling next to the little finger of the left hand—the diamond of the engagement ring, “grown too small along the years.” Such a stone has lost none of its sentimental value. Its sparkle and the memory of courtship nights may be preserved in a necklace clasp.

Designs for Clasps

A larger necklace of double or triple strands naturally calls for a more elaborate clasp. Such a clasp should not be merely a functional piece to hold the necklace together; it should be chosen for its own beauty and harmony. Often such a clasp, with the holding mechanism hidden, is worn in the front.

An effective design, in excellent taste with most jewels, may be fashioned in a flower motif with a black pearl in the centre. A smart-looking clasp, consisting of round diamonds and baguettes, can be made to separate into as many smaller clasps as the necklace has strands. One may thus wear a single necklace of, say, three strands, or three separate necklaces at the same time or on different occasions. Different lengths and combinations of necklaces can be arranged, in this way, to suit the mood or various degrees of décolleté. Clipped together, the whole clasp forms a beautiful ornament at the back of the necklace.

For Formal Wear

With a strapless evening gown, where the line of the back should be uninterrupted, another pattern of necklace and clasp lends distinction to the ensemble. This is an arrangement of three to five strands in the front, with only two or, at most, three smaller strands, close together in the back. There are two motifs, one on each side, separating the back strands from the ones in front; one of these motifs conceals the clasp. The two motifs, which may be of diamonds or of gold, should be visible only from the front, so as to preserve the graceful lines of the back décolleté; they can be highly decorative while remaining less formal or less pretentious than a necklace of diamonds.

When wearing such a many-stranded necklace, long earclips, at other times suitable to an evening gown, should be eschewed; the combination will seem overdone. The two clasps and the strands of pearls will be sufficiently eloquent, if worn together with regular, not pendant, earrings.

The Sentimental Clasp

A clasp may often be fashioned of an heirloom. There may be a brooch or a ring which has been passed along in a family for generations or been linked with personal and sentimental episodes and memories. Or there may be a piece of jewelry which a woman does not wish to abandon—yet which has fallen out of style. What may look old-fashioned on the dress front may preserve all its beauty as a clasp. Indeed, an old piece of jewelry, without altering the setting, may in this way be incorporated into a necklace. The very beautiful early Victorian or baroque flower brooches, for example, and rings and ornamental pins of those styles, may readily be converted into clasps for a two- or three-strand necklace. A brooch may become a centerpiece to be worn in the front, or it can give an unusual but becoming effect worn at the side. Carefully fitted to sit at the proper place at one side of the neck, such a clasp adds distinction to the contour.

Fitting the Pearl Necklace

A properly chosen pearl or bead necklace can do much to counterbalance features of the neck. Few women realize this and therefore do not pay sufficient attention to their choice. They spend less time on this than on the selection of a hat. Yet I have seen cases where as little as one-eighth of an inch difference in length made all the difference in the world in beauty.

For a long neck, the necklace should be short and rest on or a little above the nape of the neck. For a shorter and wider neck, the necklace should come a little below the nape to create an oval rather than a round impression. A heavy neck can be deftly dressed in three or four strands. The first strand should nestle slightly below the nape of the neck with just a little space left between the rows—too much will give the effect of a dowager. Properly spaced, such a necklace will create a slender and youthful appearance. A motif on each side, by breaking the even line, will further create an effect of a longer and more slender neck.

The Bead Necklace

For thousands of years the lapidaries of India have painstakingly, by hand, cut, polished and pierced rubies to fashion them into beads for necklaces. The often uneven shape is preserved so that the slight irregularity of the beads both stresses their preciousness and adds to their charm. Ruby beads are usually strung on silk or on platinum wire, as are beads of emeralds and sapphires. The beautiful glow of these precious stones is soft and flattering, no less so when interspersed with motifs of brilliant diamonds and baguettes. Such an array of rubies or deep sapphires, directly touching the radiant skin, is a breathtaking sight.

Fashions From India

The Indian Maharanees, visiting the leading fashion centers of the world less than a century ago, came with large assortments of these precious gems. The many-stranded necklace, first seen in the gorgeous costuming of the Eastern lands, created a new fashion in the western world. Today every elegant occasion is sure to be graced with some of these necklaces of rare and exquisite beauty.

I once had the pleasure of designing for Her Highness Indira Dewi, the Maharanee of Cooch-Behar, a parure of ruby beads: earrings, necklace, bracelet and ring of enormous stones, all combined with diamonds. My first visit with Her Highness held me amazed. She opened a great cowhide coffer which contained an unforgettable assortment of pouches made of the finest gold brocade; they held a veritable dream of riches. Rubies, sapphires, emeralds poured forth—thousands of carats in each pouch. I watched, as though in a vision of Aladdin’s cave, while this glimpse of the Orient was spread before me.

It was much as the Elizabethan poet Christopher Marlowe pictured in his dream of the Orient splendor:

Give me the merchants of the Indian mines,

That trade in metal of the purest mould;

The wealthy Moor, that in the eastern rocks

Without control can pick his riches up

And in his house heap pearls like pebble-stones,

Receive them free, and sell them by the weight;

Bags of fiery opals, sapphires, emeralds,

Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds,

And seld-seen costly stones of so great price

As one of them indifferently rated

And of a carat of this quantity

May serve in peril of calamity

To ransom great kings from captivity ...

Infinite riches in a little room.

Other Necklace Jewels

Necklaces are, of course, wrought with many other stones. There are soft and Battering shades of aquamarine, turquoise, amethyst, lapis lazuli, the frequent coral and the aristocratic jade—to name but a few—that look superb on a proud neck. Earclips and rings may usually be worn to match. Such parures and semiprecious stones make ideal sets for daytime wear, especially, since they combine delightfully with cotton and with chintz, for a young, fresh, summertime effect.

Coral may be used in almost any range of red, from deep ox-blood to the most delicate hue of pink. The white corals, especially chalk-white, are unbecoming to most shades of skin and are not recommended save for that summer shade regretfully called “new sunburn.” Whatever the stones, the color of the necklace should be chosen with regard to the more usual complexion so that the brightness of the jewels adds an accordant glow to the skin.

The Necklace of Gold

Today the gold necklace is worn in endless variety. It may be narrow or wide; simple or elaborate; classical, antique or modern.

A tailored gold necklace can be worn throughout the day. It is likely to have rather heavy links, and the brightness of the gold will shed lovely highlights on the skin. Or it may be fashioned of twisted wire, sometimes in multicolored gold, thereby creating a three-dimensional effect in the design. Here again the jewel shows how akin the goldsmith is to the sculptor.

The dressier types of necklace are worn quite wide. They are daintily made, woven to deserve the name “neck-lace.” Being fashioned of fine metal into open work, they are flexible and follow the movements of the neck. Such a gold necklace can be touched with diamonds or colored stones, so as to create a lively interplay of highlights which brighten the soft glow of the skin. The metal should be chosen so as to capture not the brazen but the softer qualities of the gold.

Appendages: The Tassel

A charming variation from the plain band around the neck is achieved by the addition of a tassel. The knot of this may be a tight band of gold, plain or centered with a diamond. The hanging cords may be links or chains or tiny medallions of gold; they may be many strands of pearls; or they may be baguette and round diamonds in a tumbling cascade. There is something especially feminine, and pleasantly gay, in a tassel. Its constant motion keeps it ever freshly beautiful.

The tassel may be worn, for a change, gaily swinging from the jacket as a lapel pin, but it is at its best on the necklace. There it will usually hang from the center; but it should be made detachable so that, with certain dresses, it may be put on the necklace at the side to give a different, piquant air to the ensemble.

Appendages: The Single Drop

At the height of mid-century necklace fashion is the addition of the single drop. This should not be long, like a pendant, but rather one large extra stone, clipped on close to the collier to add chic and smartness. It may be a pear-shaped diamond, a grey or a black pearl, an emerald, or indeed any stone that harmonizes with the necklace color—though most frequently such a drop is worn on a necklace of diamonds or pearls. The single stone is set with an almost invisible clasp and can be attached to the necklace at any point desired. Resultant effects can be startling. The appearance of the necklace may be completely transformed; a daytime jewel may be transmuted to evening elegance. Various moods can be deftly suggested, or stressed, by the clever placing of the jewel drop.

Transformations

The construction of a necklace so that it can be transformed, as I suggested before in connection with the rivière, marks an increasing aspect of jewelry design. The diamond necklace, appropriate only to the off-shoulder evening gown and adorning only the most formal occasions, spends more time in the treasure chest or vault than any other jewel. Its usefulness is increased many-fold when it is so created that it comes apart to form bracelets and clips and other jewels more frequently worn.

The devising of detachable parts and convertible jewels is no new-fangled practice. It began in France before the French Revolution, first gaining popularity with a social élite that initiated many fashions. Many eighteenth and nineteenth century necklaces also served as tiaras. Jewels in our museums today testify to the great skill and ingenuity with which the earlier artists cunningly contrived and concealed the mechanical devices that made possible these transformations.

My Own Conversions

One of my own most exacting assignments was to create such a necklace for a beautiful Viennese ballerina. It was specified that the necklace should separate to form a bracelet and five clips of various sizes. Two of these were to form an assorted pair of dress clips; two were to be matched for the ears; one was to be larger, to serve as a brooch but with an attachment so that it might also become a hair ornament. The completed necklace, which was really a unified parure, was put on exhibition, bringing me my first Gold Medal für Schönheit und Kunst at the Künstlerhaus.

Another of my necklaces, displayed in color in Vogue Magazine, is separable into two bracelets, of different size and design, and a large dip that can be used on a dress or as the centerpiece in other jewels.

Other convertibles suggest themselves, once the imagination begins to play. It must be remembered that the problem is complex, because it is not simply a question of what other jewels a main piece can be broken into. The major concern is how well all the transformations fit the personality of the individual who is to wear them.

I have designed a diamond-encircled ring, the main piece of which is a diamond rose. The center stone of this rose may be changed, so that a ruby, emerald or pearl can be set in, according to the mood, the occasion and the color of the gown. Also, the entire diamond rose may be detached to become a brooch or a main attachment on a bracelet.

Another of my convertible jewels is a diamond necklace that can be used as a choker or, by the addition of platinum chains, can be lengthened in various sizes. It may also, with the help of the platinum chains, be turned into two bracelets. Still another convertible—of which there can be many motifs—is a fan-rosette clip, made to slide so smoothly onto a diamond necklace that the two become one jewel.

I have found it a challenge to devise necklaces convertible into other unusual jewels; many of these have been exhibited and shown on newsreels throughout the world.

What a Woman Wears, Others See

A mirror is the nearest a woman looking at her jewels can come to the world’s viewpoint. She wears the jewels; others should admire the effect. And they will only if the complexion, the contours and the personality have all been wrought into harmony in the selection of the jewel. The completely garbed and adorned woman is the jewel.

Few women can buy a different necklace for each garment they are likely to wear. A well chosen necklace should be attractive whether worn close to a high-neck dress or above an off-shoulder gown. It should be tried on with both types of dress before being bought.

A good jeweler will not only permit but encourage such a practice. He will lend his counsel out of his wide experience. He will probably be more interested in making a woman happy than in making a sale. (Even from the point of view of his own financial advantage, this is a wise, long-range view. And no woman should go to a jeweler whose interest in her will not be long-range.) In addition to a good jeweler, there should be another male more nearly concerned, whose opinion is valued. But the woman herself has to face the world with her jewels. They are her adjuncts and intimate accessories to beauty. In the final choice she must remember that the necklace, most prominent of her jewels, must capture her own personality and tastefully proclaim her character.

CHAPTER 7
The Ring

While the necklace is the most conspicuous jewel in a woman’s parure, and the earclip does more than any other to make subtle alterations in her appearance, the finger ring is beyond compare the most popular of all jewels. There seems little to be said about the purchase of a ring except that one should select a beautiful jewel, and yet there are many ways in which the ring can not only contribute to the overall effect of the personality but actually beautify the hand.

The Giving of a Ring

In the first place, the manifold aspects of its symbolism—to be discussed more fully later—bar this jewel from any casual giving. A brooch, a clip, earclips, or a bracelet: all these might be sent as a gift to any person, without further thought; but a ring is bought for and given to a relative, or someone closer still—or someone to whom one wishes to be close. And the recipient of a ring should be aware of the implications involved in its acceptance. If a ring is proffered as a gift before there is an understanding that admits of such a present, the intended recipient will find a gracious way of declining such an “elaborate” or “too magnificent” or “over-generous” gift.

Consider the Hand

The right to give a ring includes the pleasure of selecting a gift that will both please and adorn. This demands some consideration of that fine instrument too often taken for granted, the human hand. Most of the time we merely use our hands. Nevertheless, almost unconsciously yet almost inevitably, our glance falls upon a person’s fingers when we meet, for the hands are the surest guide to an individual’s make-up. And I do not mean the “make-up” that is applied. Faces may be altered; neck wrinkles may be disguised; fingernails are dressed up; chins may be lifted; noses may be shaped—the hands remain undisguised.

The ring calls attention to the hand. It invites the gaze, which, while admiring the ring, is also aware of the fingers that are background to the jewel. And the ring should be selected not only to fit the finger but also to suit the hand.

Proportions of the Hand

A hand may be long and slender or long and large. It may be short and stubby or short and thin. It may taper from the palm along almost straight fingers or have the line broken by larger knuckles. There are differences in the proportion between the fingers and the palm. All of these elements of finger size and shape, of hand proportions, should be weighed in selecting a ring. They have an important bearing on the size and shape of the stones, and on the width or thickness of the band. Comparatively few women, however often they may have polished their nails, are really familiar with their hands.

Certain general proportions between rings and hands need little more than mention. A small ring overemphasizes a large hand. On slender fingers or a small hand, a large ring is overpowering. If a fairly large ring is desired by someone with a dainty hand, a dome-shaped ring may be most becoming, or a ring with the stone set high; but it should be worn only on the third finger. Such a ring adds considerable style to an outfit. If the fingers are quite short, however, it will be best to choose an oblong ring. If the fingers are long and thin, the stone should be set so as to run not along the finger but across it; the eye, following the ring, tends to foreshorten the finger length. The ring should fit the personality; the stone may fit the occasion.

The Diamond Ring: The Engagement Ring

The engagement ring is, in all probability, a young woman’s first important ring. There is, for this, hardly any choice other than a diamond. The gem, however, may be variously set. Usually it is a single stone, the solitaire, in a plain band of gold or platinum. The diamond may be brilliant cut; this is conservative but in impeccable taste. It should be set in thin high prongs of the chosen metal, so as to give fullest play to the light from all its facets and to take full advantage of its irradiating brilliance.

Among other cuts that are favored for the engagement diamond are the square, the emerald, and the pear-shaped. For shorter or thicker fingers, a highly effective cut is the marquise. This cut is named in honor of the Marquise de Montespan, an elegant, beautiful and sensible woman who was mistress of Louis XIV. Aware of the somewhat short length of her fingers, she ordered the crown jeweler to have her ring diamonds cut in the form of an oval pointed at both ends. Because it resembles a boat, this cut is sometimes called the navette, but now more often the marquise. Making the fingers seem longer and more slender, it at once became a popular diamond style. When testing the appearance of a stone on the finger, it is well to look at a marquise-cut diamond.

While the solitaire is still the most popular engagement ring, there is a youthful jauntiness in combinations of diamonds which has made the use of several stones a current vogue. Almost any newly betrothed maiden would feel keenly disappointed if the ring did not have as its center stone the large solitaire. But this may be pleasantly flanked by smaller stones of different cut, such as two baguettes lying close along the band.

The Wedding Ring

The obvious symbolism of the wedding ring, as it is often told today, marks the subjection of the woman to the will of the man, her pledge to continue to love, honor and obey. Some supposed thinkers in the field of folklore go farther, and tell us that the ring is placed on the left, the inferior, hand to denote that the woman is “inferior.” These ideas are manifestly advanced by men. Two facts at once put them out of joint. In the first place, the wedding ring for long periods of time was worn on the right hand. In the second place, for equally long periods of time, both bride and groom had a ring put on in mutual bondage.

The basic significance of the ring remains, however, twofold. The first meaning is symbolical. Being endless, the ring betokens the love without end that is the hope of the betrothal and the realization of two lives long spent “as one.” The second meaning was practical. The marriage ring was the man’s signet ring, which was as universally obeyed as his direct order, for the stamp of that seal was as the thunder of his command. By placing this ring on the bride’s finger, he was conferring upon her equal authority in the household and home—literally carrying out what he declared in the wedding service: “With all my worldly goods I thee endow.” It is not subordination but everlasting equality in mutual respect and love that is held in the magic circle of the wedding band.

The Wearing of the Band

Two rings should not be worn at the same time on the same hand, except the wedding ring, which in due time comes to slide along the same finger as the engagement ring to mark the fulfilment of the first ring’s promise. As they are to be boon companions for a long, long time, the wedding ring should be of the same metal as the engagement ring. The wide wedding band, though almost universal at the beginning of this century and returning to popularity, has certain disadvantages. It looks becoming only on a large hand. Even there it may make the engagement ring look too small.

In more than the size and the metal, the engagement ring’s style should be considered in the purchase of the wedding band. A neutral pattern is simplest to match. It might be an unadorned band of metal or a simple ring of small round, baguette or marquise diamonds, or two of these cuts alternating, set close to the metal. Alternating marquise and round diamonds may form a sort of crown design and a most attractive jewel. There is a great variety of possible patterns and styles among which one should select carefully, for this is the choice of a lifetime.

In measuring the size of the wedding band, care should be taken not to make it too snug. Even if one be fortunate enough not to add weight with the years, the size of the fingers changes with the seasons. They swell a little in hot weather, and if the band is too tight the finger will bulge on either side. It is better to fit the ring for the July finger, and in December, if necessary, wear an unobtrusive and attractive guard.

The Pearl Ring

After the diamond ring in beauty and popularity, and freer from any intimate symbolism, is the pearl ring. The pearl ring is appropriate throughout the day for many occasions. It will harmonize with most colors, once it has been carefully chosen—as I indicated when discussing the pearl necklace—to harmonize with the wearer’s complexion. In fact, a pearl necklace and a pearl ring may make a beautiful combination.

The pearl ring is often enhanced by the effect of flanking diamonds. A white pearl against white skin sometimes calls for added light or color. By proper design, with well chosen accompanying stones, a pearl may be made to look lighter or darker, larger and more luminous.