Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in good condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Jewellery has been worn at all times for personal adornment. Even the poor can usually contrive to wear some sort of bright knick-knack. Jewellery made of gemstones and precious metals rep- resents wealth as well as adornment and during the three centuries surveyed in this book jewellery was exchanged among the rich as part of the ceremony of courtly life. Many of the pieces illustrated here are elaborate and expensive courtly jewellery but stylistic changes can also be studied on more modest pieces. A convenient starting point for the history of English jewellery is a sumptuary law (i.c. a law to regulate what private citizens on luxury goods) passed in 1363 when Edward III was King of spent England. This law is most revealing to anyone interested in social history and the history of jewellery. It seems that too many of the wrong sorts of people had started to wear jewellery so that the visible differences of rank were being obscured and the wealth of the realm was being squandered. Consequently the new law for- bade handycraftsmen and yeomen to wear ‘belts collars clasps rings garters brooches ribbons chains bands or seals or any other thing whatsoever of gold or silver’; and this restriction included their wives and children as well. This law not only provides a list of almost every sort of jewellery worn at the time but it is a reminder that jewellery was much more than an optional personal adornment it was also a sign of the wearer’s place in society: it was part of the closely regulated ceremonial of life. Elaborate gifts of brooches necklaces and rings were exchanged at New Year by members of the court and the princely house and every diplomatic encounter also involved ex- changes of goldsmiths’ work and jewellery. For example the ac- counts of the Duke of Burgundy for 1396-7 show a payment to three Italian merchants from Genoa Florence and Lucca for jewels among which was one that can certainly be called courtly: a gold hind with the device of the King of England decorated with stones