Victorian Jewelry Design

During the sixty-four years of Queen Victoria's reign it is possible to find examples of every imaginable material being used to make jewellery, and some unimaginable, like human teeth! The discovery of new metals and stones, the development of new techniques and the revival of old ones, put a vast range of possibilities at the disposal of the designers, and this opportunity to experiment was seized by many of them. If the newly rich middle-class consumers lacked the educated taste of the eighteenth century aristocratic patrons, they did at least release the minor arts from the stranglehold of the opinions of the legendary 'man of taste'. Jewellery design has rarely been so inventive, before or since, as it was from the fifties of the last century to the beginning of the first world war, and if some of the inventions were not entirely successful that was only to be expected. — Charlotte Gere

•• = chapter in Charlotte Gere's Victorian Jewelry.