INTERNATIONAL JEWELLERY.
THE general effect of an extensive display of heterogeneous Jewellery is displeasing and fatiguing to the eye. The hardness and the glitter come out too strongly, the sense of orna- ment is lost in that of profusion, and the unmeaningness which jewellery, as an object of art, generally has to contend against is increased. Pictures, which mean so much suffer by contiguity with their kind ; jewels, which, save by association only, mean nothing but money and mechanism, are wearisome, in long lines of cases, arranged as they are in the International Exhibition, in most commonplace order, without any attempt at the distinction, which might have been so easily established, between those which boast historical interest and those which have merely commercial value. The long, narrow, dull "Court," and the heavy monotonous
cases, as ungraceful as the readi ng -stands of a public new sroom,which they resemble, especially when people want to elbow other people away from "the Princess's" necklaces, as if the latest edition of the Times were in question, is as unprepossessing a field for the display as could be imagined, and it is difficult to understand why the pretty things are set forth with such uncongenial grimness. It is still more difficult to understand why a prominent place at the beginning of the collection has been assigned to imitation jewellery, which, of all mock things, is most wanting in raison d'etre, because it possesses neither the real value nor the potential associative importance of the gems which represent the wresting by human toil and patience from the bosom of the earth of her hidden treasure, slow formed in Nature's laboratory during countless ages. Of course it is fitting that in a display of modern industry, mock jewellery and imitation gold, which are so extensively used in an age whose children ought to know better than to use them, should find a place ; but it need not be the first place, and it might be a place somewhat apart from antique treasures, from cases of foriegn jewels which possess a national significance that never has attached itself to English adornments either of clothing or jewellers' work, and from the gifts, splendid and barbaric, of Indian Rajahs to the Princess of Wales. Being forced to see these things first, the visitor must acknowledge that they are wonderful of their kind ; that the serpent rings, the huge lockets, the fetterlike bracelets, the massive waistclaeps, the fantastic, un- graceful earrings, the thick clumsy wrist-buttons, the horsey and doggy breast-pins, are admirably gilded, and very like the real things, as they may be seen at the far end of the gallery, in the Birmingham cases. "Let us be massive, let us be big, let us be heavy I" seems to be the motto of modern design, especially in the great cheese-plate lockets, laden with straddling many-coloured monograms, of which there are hundreds of specimens in the Exhibition.
A case of ornaments which do not pretend to be rinything but wrought iron and steel is one of the most attractive. Some of the designs are very quaint and pretty. One, in particular, is an arm, in plate armour, whirling on high a spiked ball, suspended by a chain, a miniature of a terrible medimval weapon ; another is a shield in dull metal, with two crossed battle-axes in bright steel. A pair of handcuffed bands, to be worn at the wrists, is truly hideous. Who will buy such an ornament except an ma- developed Jack Sheppard in the habit of "walking out" with Edgeworth Bess of the period? Some cut-glass parures are very pretty, and of surprising costliness. Who are the purchasers who buy glass necklaces, earrings, and bracelets, at 145 the set? Close by is a case of fine uncut gems, among them a speci- men of the rare (and ugly) black coral, and one of the prettiest toys we have ever seen, a miniature model, in the most delicate materials, of a working lapidary's bench. What fairy-like tools, and what nearly impalpable dust of ground gems, wherewith to polish up bright prettineases, with wear of precious eyesight! what a wonderful little mortar, scooped out of a pebble ! A case of jewels, lent by Madame Jubinal, is like a little bit out of the Muse° de Cluny, with its crucifixes of exquisite design and wonderfully delicate and intricate workmanship, its chains and chatelaines, its necklaces in which the most fragile flowers are imitated in enamel of every hue and of everlasting durability, its earrings of such quaint fashion, that here is a Triton blowing his shell into my lady's ear, and there a dolphin tickling • it with his tail; here the Burgundian lion swings from it, holding his shield in his golden paws, and there a crocodile arches beneath it his serrated back, in scales of cunning enamel, and grins with ghastly grinders of rubies in emerald jaws. Here are curious ituis of gold and silver, thick-set with jewels, painted porcelain thimbles, scent-bottles, rings, begemmed missal-clasps, and dainty pins for the marvellous coifs of old times ; ornaments infinitely rich and delicate, and in exact opposite to the taste of the present time, for
they suggest an extraordinary expenditure of time and labour, and the least possible display of precious materials in point of space and weight. Here is a necklet of marguerites—" pansies for
thoughts "—as we should call them, in such soft, blushing, purple enamel, with faint grey rims, and shaded golden centres, as no
doubt did lie "so light, so light," that the fair neck round which it was clasped hundreds of years ago, after the artist-craftsman had fashioned it, at long cost of time and labour, hardly felt the pressure. But can we imagine the Welsh necklace, and the terrible, splendid, glittering badges given by the Cymri of 1863 to their Prince's bride, being anything but a burthen. They are very bright
and very heavy and wonderfully made, and they cost a great deal of money, and they are in their proper place in a show; but a slender woman adorned with them would be painful to behold, and would
remind one of no pleasanter historic heroine than poor Tarpeia. The Indian jewels are beautiful, their singular, eccentric forms, the individuality of each gem, the careless stringing of them, the sweeping fringe of emerald, the informal tangle of pearls, the aspect of natural wealth appropriate to their Eastern origin, all this has a poetical side quite wanting to the others.
How common-place is the fine bouquet-holder given to the Princess by Maharaj Dhuleep Singh, with its costly formality and mechanical ingenuity, compared with the gifts of the Rajahs of Nabha and Kappoortulla, which might have been simply snatched up out of the earth, and stolen from the Penis under the sea by some obedient enslaved djinn, and. laid in a tray at Nourmahal's feet, to be strung by her lazy dusky fingers. In strange and striking contrast, again, with these, are the specimens of Japanese jewellery, the exquisite, finished art of the Far East. Here is a necklace of globular crystals, precisely like soap-bubbles blown in the sunshine by a proficient. Here ate bronze necklets and bracelets, series of minute medallions, whose designs are of incon- ceivable delicacy, accuracy, and beauty. Two-sworded men, sun- flowers, dragons, flies, graceful storks, wonderful tiny birds with golden beaks and eyes of starry jewels, fans, not an inch in width, which would bear microscopic examination, flowers such as the Princess of Japanese fable may have pined away and died for, and the queerest bits of grotesque and satirical art mingled in beautiful profusion. The Chinese jewellery is minute, ingenious, and curious, but the colours are ill-assorted, the designs mono- tonous, and there is none of that free following of nature which makes Japanese art so delightful. The Kandyan and Ceylonese collections are interesting because they repre- sent so much of the life of the people of those countries, and because they are of unchanged tradition ; but they are not so beautiful or curious as the Moorish jewellery, or as many specimens of the ornaments worn by the Indian peasantry in remote districts of Hindostan, in the large and various collection lent by Mrs. Rivett-Carnac, which fills several cases, and occupies a distinguished position. Among these are quantities of bangles, and strange head-tires, rough strings of pearls, and twisted ropes of golden wire, slender silver rings which remind one of the tinkling ankles of the dancing-girls, and sacred amulets graven in strange characters, many of incalculable age, almost effaced by centuries of transmission before they became the prey of the Feringhee spoiler. From Leon, Andalusia, and Gallicia come daintily carved pendent buttons, and the broad chased shoe- buckles of the dancer and the matador ; wrought dagger-sheaths and hilts, silvery-toned, tinkling bells, carved crucifixes in ebony and silver, many amulets, and a broad, red-brown, irregular, crumpled, shiny chestnut, set in beautifully chased silver rims, with a quaint hinge,—a work of art which, doubtless, had a story in old times. The collections from the Northern countries are mostly cold and unsuggestive, except for the silver chains worn by the Bernese peasantry, and one pretty badge suspended to a leathern girdle, bearing, in silver, the image of a belled cow,—which calls up a picture of the Dalecarlian summer. The Austrian jewellery is all defective in colour, and the German is a mass of staring ugliness ; mere bits of shining atone stuck into mere bits of shining metal. The Belgian case contains very fine, massive, and precise gold work, and a few of the pearl settings are remarkable ; the collection is pleasant to the eye as a harmonious arrangement of colour, and a relief from the Venetian glass and beads in the vicinity. If half the quantity of Venetian work had been admitted, the effect would have been much better, and the real beauty of the bead manufacture more perceptible. As it is, the eye wearies of the profusion and the monotony. Mrs. Alfred Morrison lends some very beautiful speci- mens of Castellani's jewellery, a rare Spanish parure, an enamel Moorish necklace, which ought to have been placed in a separate case, and a necklace of green jade, representing flint weapon- heads, which is equally injured by promiscuous surroundings. It is very provoking to find so tasteless a mingling of the shop and the bazaar, with the pretension and proclamation of an Art Exhibition.
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