In the mid 19th c. in Birmingham England, gold would be made into chains, cases, jewelry, studs, links, buttons, combs and wedding rings. Many of these artisans were former gold buckle designers once it had gone out of fashion. "The fact that coal gas was laid on early is also significant because a reliable source of heat is one of thw orking jeweller's first needs."
At this time gold jewellery was on the upswing for several reasons. Colonization and the Gold Rush in California and Australia allowed plentiful resource to a metal so precious the only way to obtain it was by melting down out fashioned jewelry (gold coins were also popular to melt). But the demand was also on the rise:
"The prime reason for that (demand) lay in the role of the victorian woman who had become a kind of shop-window for the display of her husband's wealth and success."
Styles of Jewelry were still centered around the nobility "For the jeweller the highest recognition he could receive was the cachet of royal approval."
"In order to affirm his place in the social order a man had... to obtain a bosom. It was not a bosom to repose upon, but it was a captial bosom to hang jewels upon." With the rise of the middle class (bourgeasouise), and role of the aristocrate becoming diminished, and the businessman elevated; the style of the businessman, merchant, lawyer, etc. took precidence over the less popular "pomp" of the aristocratic nobleman. Because fashion had traditionally displayed the wealth of the court, this image became transfered to the woman, the wife displaying her husbands wealth.
In 1860 women still covered their ear fully or partially and ordorned them with "spherical or bomb-shaped drops." By 1864 the all "novelty" shapes had become the vogue and the ear was fully exposed.
All of these factors spawned the middle class, or "medium-priced" gold jewellery that began in the 1840's.
"It was not until the 1860's that steam or gas engines were harnessed to the jewellery workshops."
In London Clerdenwell was where the finest quality jewellery was produced; possibly matched only by France.
"The serpent design, one of the most successful of Victorian fashions, was already in style both for collars and bracelets... with a ruby to suggest the eye." By 1840 artisans were coloring their gold "The idea of leaving a surface plain and undecorated seems to have filled the 19th c. jeweller with horror and every visible millimetre ws either engraved or flooded with enamel."
The 1851 Crystal Palace Expo showed traditional Baroque and Rococo and similar asymmetrical brooches shown by Ellis and Son of Exeter with a fastening method never to catch on until the 1920's. Missing completely from the exhibit were earings.
"As we have seen, great ingenuity was lavished on the dressing of th hair at this time, and all manner of combs, pins and accessories were invented to keep it in place."
"Jewellers seemed suddenly to awaken to the properties of the metals and gems htey were using and to exploit them for the their own sake. Now gold was hardly ever smothered with engravig as it once had been...for the most part it was left untouched so that it reflected a soft velvety gleam... A trick optical effect was often cleerly exploited in circular brooches... turqoise... would be surrounded by courses of decorative wirework, and round this a trough of plain metal would be sund below the surface oso that it reflected the intricacies of the border like a distorting mirror." (fig 31b)
The London Exhibition of 1862 displayed the new tiara design of a "very open scroll designe with nine graduaed emerald drops hanging in the interstices" and stone engraved cameo's (of the highest quality were still Italian and French). However, the process for creating colored onyx for cameos was by the German lapidaries of Idar Oberstein in.
While reptiles and snakes were encroaching on designs of the 1850's replacing the boroque rose and floral; the 1860's produced a popularity of insects. Flys came possibly from the newly acuisitioned Egyption tomb of Aah Hotep, beetles from south america, and bees were the emblem of Buonaparte. As well were designes of fish (that supposidly hung from the earlobe by a hook), "a necklace of diamonds and pearls with dolphins of green enamel from the mouth of which hang escallop-shaped pendants of pink enamel, each holding a pearl" showed up at the 1861 London Exhibition.
During the trade depression of the 1870's gold was too expensive for many people.
"In de Maupassant's day a Norman peasant bride was presented with a massive gold chain which was actually called an escalvage and symbolized, .. the servitude into which she was contracting."
"The steam or gas engine came into widespread use in the jewel trade around 1860."
But if Birmingham England was the center for jewellery industry in Britain and Europe, it was poorly organized and inefficiently run. England was surpassed by Providence New Jersey by the end of the 19th c. who had been slowly growing for a century into the most efficient type of factories specialising in "cheaper types of low carat and rolled gold jewellery."
The mid 1860's was when the jewellery industry became "truly mechanized."
The revulsion of the mechanized object in Europe had "increased the vulgar and mistaken craze for "sets" and "pairs" which are in themselves antagonistic to all true beauty." This came at a time when Queen Victoria had become Empress of India (1877) and the popularity of hand crafted jewellery from abroad, especially in India, became a new craze.
1. "19th c. Jewelry" by Peter Hinks Faber
and Faber, London 1975.