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Interesting facts about Jewelry (History).
Ancient Egyptian Ear Rings.
Here is a fine example of some ancient Egyptian ear rings,
made of pure gold and beads.
Jewelry:
Ever since ancient times people of all cultures have used jewelry for personal adornments, badges of social or official rank and as emblems of religious, social, or political affiliation.
Materials used in ancient jewelry: Jewelry has been made of many kinds of organic and inorganic materials such as hair, feathers, leather, scales, bones, shells, wood, ceramics, metals and minerals. But today when most people refer to jewelry, we refer to precious or semiprecious stones mounted in attractive metals such as gold, silver, platinum, copper and brass. Gold of course being the favorite.
Platinum jewelry is 50 times more rare than gold jewelry. Platinum is one of the world's strongest metals. It weighs 60% more than karat gold. Just holding it in your hand, you can feel the difference.
Culture of Jewelry.
Current knowledge of ancient jewelry comes largely from the preservation of
personal objects in tombs or portraits in surviving paintings and sculptures.
One of the most notable being the ancient Egyptians, who's processes of ornamenting metals are still employed today. They produced skillfully, chased, engraved, soldered, repousse and inlaid jewelry, they used commonly gold and silver and inlaid in these metals with semiprecious stones, enamel and glass. The most notable jewelry from ancient Egypt is from the 18th Dynasty
Other Cultures that are notable cultures in the making of jewelry were Middle Eastern from the 3rd and 2nd millennia that produced techniques in granulation, filigree, inlaid gems, closisonna and champleve enamel. Greek and Roman jewelry, gave way to the art of cameo cutting. Scythian Jewelry, the Byzantine use of jewels are also notable. A notable Medieval technique was the use of garnet slices into metal cells in the 7th Century. Other notable Jewelry came during the Renaissance times and the 17th and 18th century.
Interesting facts about gold and costume jewelry.
Gold the metal of the Gods, thought to have come from the Sun. Gold in its
pure form is 24 carats, it is a soft metal, much like lead metal, it bends
easily. Over the ages man has found that in order to make more durable jewelry,
gold had to be mixed with harder metals. This is the reason jewelry is not made
in pure gold, it comes in 18 carats, 14 carats and 10 carats, 10 carats being
the one with less gold. It also is used to plate or layer other metals to make
jewelry often called costume jewelry.
Most gold used in jewelry is alloyed with silver, copper and small amounts of zinc to produce various shades of yellow gold, or with nickel, copper, zinc and rhodium to produce white gold. The color of these gold alloys goes from yellow to white as the proportion of nickel in them increases. Alloying gold with copper creates what is known as rose or pink gold.
The popularity of costume jewelry grew when Movie Stars from Hollywood started wearing costume jewelry in films and in real life around the 1940s. Beauty and originality of design as well as careful craftsmanship marks many pieces from the 30s, 40s and even today's craftsmanship is known for it's quality. Today antique costume jewelry is enjoying a huge revival and desirability that can fetch thousands of dollars on the market. It is known that many high class celebrities use costume jewelry in public, such as the Queen of England who uses costume jewelry copies of her expensive jewelry in public and leave the original jewelry in her safety deposit box under guard. Some of today's celebrities who favor costume jewelry are Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, Diane Deaton, Tina Turner, Madonna, Prince, Demi Moore, Courtney Love and Nicotette Sheridan.
"Index"------"Facts about Jewelry" -----"Links for Jewelry"-----"Antique Jewelry Photo Gallery"---- "Strange customs/facts about Jewelry"--------"Care and Cleaning of Jewelry"-------Mascaras Index |