Victorian jewelry
- 1. VICTORIAN JEWELRY Surprisingly, the Molank jewelry discovered in South Africa proves that opal jewelry was introduced by humans 100,000 years ago. Molank is jewelry made from small snails, oysters and their shells.Although it was no doubt a more functional purpose than man sorting (e.g. to keep clothes together). In the early days, natural materials were used, such as animal teeth, shells, bones, wood and stone. The Georgian era began in the 1760s. The large-sized ornaments of the past were replaced by subtle small sizes. Jewelry from this period is hard to find, but Victorian jewelry from the mid-1800s to the reign of Queen Victoria is a different story. The Queen's death marked the end of the Victorian era in 1901.The eighteen-year-old queen not only liked jewelry, she also designed it. The conch carvings by the Italians were in favor of cameos. Women were known to travel to Italy to buy opal necklaces, earrings and cameo design brooches and lava jewelry made from the colorful lava of Mount Vesuvius. Soon the Industrial Revolution saw the work of making jewelry and as a result the hand carving ended. The Queen was also credited for the attractive opal bracelet, and she had several interesting designs. He often gave jewelry as gifts to family and friends. Jewelry was a symbol of the dignity of the rich, or with fashionable clothing, but the rise of the middle class created the demand for a large-scale production.Queen Victoria continues to set trends for other women and her romantic nature and nature itself is reflected in jewelry designed with birds, hearts, butterflies, dragonflies, ornamental flowers, ribbons and bows. Jewelry with hair on both the living and the dead was especially popular. Some of these pieces were very complex in their design. Pendants were used to hold the hair or pictures of the dead.Victoria also liked the design of the serpent, a symbol of eternal love and her engagement ring to Prince Albert in 1840 was a serpent with an emerald on its head. Terms of love such as “beloved” or “honor” often appear in the engagement ring. A brooch of sapphires and diamonds, a gift from her husband, adorned her wedding dress.The queen also liked opal, but other affordable semi-precious stones such as amethyst, coral, pearl, turquoise and garnet were widely applied in the market. Ivory, seed pearl, bog oak, smoky quartz, jasper, agate, enamel, petrified wood, marble, as well as gold and silver found in Scottish jewelry were popular with the public as tartan plaids became fashionable after the Queen's birth.New inventions of gold have resulted in different methods of processing gold and making gold jewelry more affordable. Diamonds, due to the opening of diamond mines in South Africa, were also becoming within the reach of the middle class. In 1861, Victoria's husband Prince Albert died and so-called mourning jewelry made of black stone such as black roses, jets and black enamel. These were usually worn by the relatives of the deceased.The jet was engraved on necklaces, earrings and pins. The suffrage movement began and black jewelry became fashionable. Jewelry sets were introduced during this period.