Words to the wise

From acrostic jewelry to watches, alloys to zinc, ancient Egyptian handwork to modern studio designs, a beautifully illustrated new book provides a glossary of the methods and materials used in producing jewelry.

With Looking at Jewelry: A Guide to Terms, Styles, and Techniques (Getty Publications), authors Susanne Gänsicke and Yvonne J. Markowitz aimed to create an asset for industry professionals, as well as aficionados reading auction catalogs and wondering what terms like “granulation” meant.

Each of the authors brought her specific expertise to writing and researching the book. Markowitz — the Rita J. Kaplan and Susan B. Kaplan curator emerita of jewelry at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston — addressed forms and styles, while Gänsicke — a trained goldsmith and the head of antiquities conservation at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California — dealt with processes and materials.

The goal, Markowitz says, “was accuracy,” and the pair made sure the finished volume contained the most relevant terms.

Technological evolution

Creative artists are eager to experiment with new materials and processes, notes Markowitz, and whenever a technology enters a culture, there is an evolutionary process that occurs.

“For instance, glassmaking first came into use in ancient Egypt during the New Kingdom, about 1550 [BCE],” she recounts. “Today, it’s often seen as an inexpensive material. But when it first appeared in Egypt, as with many technologies when introduced, it was considered extremely valuable and exclusive. In fact, what appear to be lapis lazuli inlays in the incredible mask of Tutankhamen are actually blue glass used in lieu of the prized stone.”

New materials generally start off valuable because of how difficult they are to acquire and work with at first, she explains. “But once the process of how to use the technique is understood, as with glass, the material becomes easier to obtain, and its luster wears off.”

Regardless, these innovations spur progress. “The fact that you can do different things with the new technology or material than you could the old ways, helps advance new forms,” Markowitz says.

Cultural imperative

“There is so much about jewelry that is culturally significant — the metal, the stone,” says Gänsicke. “Materials like amulets or birthstones took on specific values as well as protective qualities.”

Indeed, notes Markowitz, because of jewelry’s meaning in some cultures, “the technologies used to create the jewelry become integral [to that meaning].”

The spread of techniques from culture to culture has been going on since antiquity, according to Gänsicke. “People had a lot of contact through trade, even in the second millennium [BCE]. Although Egyptian jewelry was different from Sumerian jewelry, the materials available were similar, so similar solutions were found.”

That said, she continues, “there were some regional techniques that didn’t travel. In South America, a metalwork process was developed using heated copper and gold alloys and adding acid to deplete the non-precious metals and enrich the gold on the surface of an object. In essence, they were using chemical techniques that the rest of the world hadn’t yet discovered.”

Sharing these cultural influences is part of Looking at Jewelry’s aim. The book, says Gänsicke, “helps people become aware of the continuity of how jewelry was made, from antiquity until now, and how there is a universal through-line across cultures and millennia.”

Game changers

Which techniques have had a revolutionary effect on jewelry design? Authors Susanne Gänsicke and Yvonne J. Markowitz can think of a few, starting with the cutting and faceting of diamonds and gemstones.

“With diamonds used in jewelry in 16th- or 17th-century India, it was all about having a rare stone with unique symbolic properties, rather than how ‘fine’ the diamond was,” says Markowitz. “With the advance of diamond cutting, the quality or ‘fineness’ of a stone began to be important.”

Gänsicke adds that “beginning in the Renaissance, stones known since antiquity — such as sapphires or emeralds — were mostly rounded, like cabochons. As faceting became more advanced, it brought out the fire and brilliance of gems.”

The use of platinum in jewelry was revolutionary as well, says Markowitz. It “led to the Edwardian style of pierce-work, where the end product was very airy and delicate, with a minimal use of metal because of the element’s strength.”

Gänsicke also points to Egyptian faience, a material utilized in the mass production of jewelry in ancient Egypt. “The self-glazing process using a quartz-based compound could create thousands of beads and amulets. Those humble little beads and amulets allowed the production of very fine assemblages.”

Computer-aided design (CAD) printing is another game changer, continues Markowitz, “allowing you to print individual design elements that can then be assembled. As a result, an artist can create a design, turn it into a three-dimensional model that can then be printed out into a variety of media (e.g., resin, ceramic, or metal) and then adapted into a wide range of jewelry forms.”

On a broader scale, says Gänsicke, it means “production has moved out of the hands of a craftsman into a whole different industrial process. I’m not sure where that will go. The printing of metal is what is happening now and will only get better and more sophisticated.”

Markowitz acknowledges that “it’s still a very small percentage of people who are interested in jewelry created by cutting-edge technologies, but then again, there is only a small percentage of people who can afford platinum.”

Image: J. Paul Getty Museum

Article from the Rapaport Magazine - June 2019. To subscribe click here.