Bling goes ancient at new show in London
Print Edition
Diamonds may be forever, but a lot of jewelry doesn’t survive through the centuries. Rings and bracelets get broken up for re-use, pearls decay, and gold is melted down.
That explains the excitement over a new exhibition of the Cheapside Hoard — a trove of almost 500 gemstones and pieces of jewelry from the 16th and 17th centuries, dug up by workmen demolishing a building in London more than 100 years ago.
The dazzling array of opals, emeralds, garnets, rubies, sapphires, amethysts, diamonds and more is displayed as a whole for the first time at the Museum of London from yesterday.
The trove, which was buried under the brick-lined cellar floor of jewelers’ workshops, offers a glimpse into 17th-century fashion, London life and the jewelry trade. It is also an unsolved historical mystery: Why was the priceless collection buried? And why did its owner never return to dig it up?
Exhibition curator Hazel Forsyth says the most likely explanation is the English Civil War, which erupted in 1642, bringing fear to London and devastation to the luxury trade. “An awful lot of goldsmiths and jewelers went, the records say, to be soldiers — and a very large proportion didn’t come back.”
One engraved gemstone bears the name of Viscount Stafford, a title awarded in 1640, meaning the hoard was buried sometime between then and 1666, when the area’s buildings were destroyed in the Great Fire of London.
It lay undisturbed for almost 300 years until it was discovered in 1912 by construction workers demolishing a building in Cheapside, a busy commercial thoroughfare in the oldest part of London, the City. They took it to a pawnbroker who offered it to a Museum of London trustee. The gems were first displayed in 1914, but have never been shown as a complete collection until now.
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