12 Modem Jewellery and Art. 



excellence, but has now fallen into comparative disuse, together 

 with another kind of machine tooling, at one time in great 

 request for rings and ornamental edgings, called nerling. This 

 nerling was the pressing of a pattern engraved on a small steel 

 wheel, "by means of a lathe, on to any metal wire or edge 

 prepared to receive it. Then we come upon what may be 

 called the garnet period, a distinct era in the history of 

 jewellery, and which was of long duration. So far as design 

 went, nothing could be more bald and tasteless than the single 

 rows of round or oval garnets, or the occasional jumbling 

 together of several stones in a cluster to give variety to the 

 pattern. By this time the jeweller's art, as implying a know- 

 ledge of drawing, and the moulding of his materials into relief, 

 was at its lowest ebb ; but his garnets were of the finest claret 

 colour, were carefully cut, and set and foiled to perfection. 

 The diamond-jeweller still maintained his supremacy, and 

 although his designs were flat and meagre in spirit, he managed 

 to display considerable cleverness in small works, as in rings — 

 la bague marchise, for example — and in ciphers ; but here again 

 the effect was in a great measure marred by the use of the 

 cramp, or "cut down - " setting, instead of the " thread," which 

 did not permit of the modelling, so to speak, of the letters. The 

 garnet period only gave way to the period of filagree work, 

 and the substitution for the garnet of the pink and yellow 

 topaz, the jacinth, the chrysolite, the chrysoprase, the use of the 

 zircon, or jargoon, instead of rose diamonds; the introduction 

 of stone-cameos, set, in imitation of Roman work, in bright red 

 gold, with yellow nerled edges ; and last, though not least, the 

 amethyst. 



The filagree work which now came into fashion was simply 

 a revival, under modifications ; for this use of twisted and 

 screwed wire dates from the oldest times. But it was a 

 vigorous revival, and held its ground for some years. When 

 at length it yielded it was to the superior attractions of a 

 spurious Elizabethan, and an equally spurious Renaissance, 

 scroll work. That taste dying out, there was awakened a 

 passion, puffed into flame by a wind from Germany, for 

 turquoise pave, in balls, half balls, oval and round excrescences, 

 perched upon and dropped into all kinds of uncomfortable places 

 where they had no business to be. Conjointly with the tur- 

 quoise pave, came the fashion for large plain wire work — a sort 

 of golden maccaroni, involved and knotted, but to what end no 

 mortal could tell. Sometimes this wire work took the shape of 

 simple round or oval rings, inexplicably interlaced, like a 

 conjuror's puzzle ; at other times it resembled most a huddling 

 of earth-worms. The turquoise pave and the plain wire work 

 have still their admirers ; and the latter was but the precursor 



