8 Modern Jewellery and Art. 



the customer which rules the market, and not that of the 

 shopkeeper, who has simply detected the weak points of his 

 patron's fancy. 



It is not here asserted that the jewellery daily exposed 

 for sale, or made to order, is not showy, pretty, and even 

 handsome in one point of view; or that there are not 

 meritorious efforts made to produce works of artistic skill, 

 sometimes with considerable success. The better class of shop- 

 keepers would not admit within their show-rooms the paltry, 

 meretricious class of jewellery, upon the sale of which others 

 again chiefly live ; and it is by this better class, who claim to 

 have a style of their own, and who do indeed collect together 

 excellent specimens of tasteful combination and workmanship, 

 that anything like a state of art is maintained in the manufacture 

 of articles of personal ornament. But it is contended that there 

 is an absence of real art, and of that knowledge of first prin- 

 ciples upon which all true art is based, among those whose busi- 

 ness it is, and whose assumption it is, to be the interpreters of 

 cesthetic outseekings in the domains of personal adornment, in 

 gems and in the precious metals. Great advances have doubt- 

 less been made in the general effect of the jewellery produced 

 of later years, as compared with that of the times of the 

 Georges, but this effect is attributable to other causes than 

 artistic beauty of form, or even combinations of colour, and in 

 too many cases the effect is a false one. 



If we seek for examples of the styles of art produced at 

 different periods since the mediaeval ages, what do we find ? 

 Coarse, plump, and awkward outlines ; little discrimination in 

 the mingling of colours; and very inferior workmanship. 

 Indeed, in our own country, since the reign of Elizabeth, there 

 is scarcely a specimen of jewellery proper extant, which can 

 serve as a model to us of the present day. There has been 

 much good embossing and chasing throughout that period, 

 and occasionally the enameller gives us glimpses of the best 

 efforts of his art ; but there are few works in which a unity and 

 completeness of design, a refreshing contrast in the colours of 

 the gems or enamels employed, and a harmoniousness of effect 

 in details, which make up the perfect specimen, to win our 

 praise or excite our emulation. There are not wanting, here 

 and there, isolated details which are charming ; as if all the 

 materials for a perfect work were at hand, but that there failed 

 the master-mind to select and mould them together. 

 There are no evidences of the controlling taste of a Benvenuto 

 Cellini, the tracings of a Holbein,, or the minuteness and per- 

 fection of finish of the Brothers Miiller, shown in many an 

 example in the Grime Gewblbe of the Zwingler at Dresden. 

 Even on the continent, during this period, there is not very 



