In 1912, workmen were digging at the site of the Wakefield House at the corner of Friday Street and Cheapside. They drove a pickax through a decayed box that had been buried under the floorboards. The box was found to contain about 230 pieces of jewelry, stacked in trays. The box would have belonged to a jeweler, and these were his wares. He was not a jeweler to kings and queens, but to rich merchants and their wives. The stock is not elaborate, or expensive, but it is the greatest find of 16th-17th century jewelry made for commoners.

The Materials

The Goldsmith's Company (or Guild) of London required jewelers to use only precious gems and metals. However, this did not prevent the use of glass and base metal. One might think that jewelry made for commoners would use lesser quality materials in order to keep costs low. The Cheapside jeweler was true to his craft, though, and none of the gems are fake. The stones include emeralds from Brazil, iolites and rubies from India, lapis and turquoise from Persia, and Amethyst, garnets and pearls from European centers of trade.

The stones are as varied as the items they adorn. There are the basic cabochons, the most common cut stone in the middle ages and renaissance. And there are table cut gems, basic faceted stones that were the first to be refined by renaissance jewelers. But, there are also rose-cut and star-cut stones. These multifaceted stones were not thought to be developed until about 1640, when we first see one adorning the illustrious person of Cardinal Mazarin in France.

The metal is mostly gold, covered with enamel so that the gold becomes an accent rather than an intrinsic part of the jewelry. Enameling is very prominent in the hoard, as it had been for several hundred years before. Noble and commoner alike wore enameled jewelry, although the common people tended to wear much more of it. The enamel colors tend towards white, black, blue, green and amber.

The Date

There are numerous arguments for various dates, all ranging from 1600 to 1650. Some point to the complex facetted stones as proof of a later date while others point to the jewels themselves as proof of an earlier date. There is a watch with the date 1600 inscribed on it, so we know it must be after that. But many of the items would have been considered old-fashioned, even as early as 1600: the several enseignes, or hat pins, which had gone out of fashion many years before; the long chains which had begun to go out of fashion early in James I's reign; and jeweled animals which also point to an earlier date, as leaves and flowers became the in thing for brooches and jewels. Some authorities say that the hoard must have been buried under the house for safekeeping during the English Civil War in the 1630's, but this isn't necessarily so. The jeweler may have placed it there for safekeeping and had an accident, never returning to pick up his treasure. But who knows?

The Items

Of the items found in the hoard, the most numerous are the long chains, one of which is over 4 feet long. The chains are delicate and varied, made up of enameled flowers, amethysts, pearls, and gold links. These delightful chains may have been worn doubled round the neck, or perhaps as accents around the waist. Shorter chains are thought to have been worn wrapped double around the wrist as a bracelet, or perhaps as a watch fob. With such a variety of chains, it may be that the chains were sold by the foot, and the jeweler needed plenty on hand to show to his clients.

There are many enameled and box set rings. The enameling is mostly white, on the shank of the ring, and the stones vary from garnets to emeralds. There is an emerald rings set with seven stones, one in the center and six surrounding it to form a flower pattern. There are other variations of this design, as well as a few rings with a new type of pronged setting. Until the 16th century, stones were usually set in solid foil to accent their color, but with the new gem cutting techniques, open pronged settings became a popular way of showing off a particularly pretty or well-cut stone.

There are a number pendants and earrings, as well. But earrings at this time looked more like pendants, often having two or three tiers of hanging gems. This type of earring was often worn by tying a thread to it, and threading the string through a hole pierced in the ear. And earrings did not always come in pairs. Men were still in the habit of wearing one spectacular earring, and women would do it too, though perhaps not as often. Because of the singular earrings, the pendants and earrings are hard to differentiate in the hoard. But it probably makes no difference anyway. The wearers probably used them interchangeably themselves.

The most perplexing type of items are the holders. These delicate little handles are 2-4 inches long, enameled and jeweled, and obviously designed to hold something. One theory is that they are fan handles. It has been suggested that they cannot be fan handles because fans were an expensive luxury item, and a jeweler such as this would not carry them. I don't think this follows, as commoners had inexpensive fans just as they had inexpensive jewelry. The reason they are not fan handles is that they are just too small. Another theory is that they would have had tufts of feathers and been used as hawk lures, but that would require different types of chains not included in the collection. The most plausible theory (Armstrong, p109) is that they were for cosmetic use. They would have had tufts of very soft feathers and been used to apply face powder.

Various other items include pomanders, bodkins or hairpins, buttons, and animals carved from semi-precious stones.

The Cheapside Hoard Today

The hoard itself was scattered among several museums in London. It can be seen at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum, and the Guildhall Museum, but the bulk of the collection currently resides at the Museum of London.

-AC

Links:

The Museum of London - Where most of the jewels aredisplayed, but the pictures on this site rotate, so they may not have pictures of the jewels up when you go.

The Tour of London presented on the Costume.org site - this has pictures of the pieces in their display cases.

Bibliography and Picture Credits:

Armstrong, Nancy. Jewellery: An Historical Survey of British Styles and Jewels. London: 1973, Lutterworth Press.

Phillips, Claire. Jewelry: From Antiquity to the Present. London: 1996, Thames and Hudson, Inc.

Phillips, Clare. Jewels and Jewelry. New York: 2000, Watson-Guptill Publications.

Scarisbrick, Diana. Tudor and Jacobean Jewellery. London: 1995, Tate Publishing.

Swarbick, Janet, Ed.. The Decorative Arts Library: Jewellery. London: 1998, Eagle Editions.

Copyright 2001 by Alexandra Ceely. All rights reserved. Please do not reprint the text of this article without my permission.

 

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