The transcendent, timeless beauty of medieval jewels has
not diminished with the passing of time. Made from the most
precious and beautiful materials known to the medieval
world—gold, silver, gems, pearls—, they also captivate modern
beholders.
Few medieval jewels have come down to posterity. Because of the
inherent value of their materials, many were destroyed, or
rather, constantly recycled: they were melted down and reused in
newer, more fashionable pieces.
However, the significance of medieval jewelry goes far beyond
its material or decorative value. Precious objects communicated
complex meanings and connotations and thus constituted an
indispensable part of the medieval language of signs.
The raw materials of medieval jewelry
Goldsmiths worked mainly with the two most precious metals, gold
and silver, and used enamel, pearls, and stones for the
decoration of their products.
Gold was seen as the most prestigious metal, for which
silver-gilt or silver were seen as poorer substitutes, most
suitable for lower classes.
A large proportion of gold used in late medieval production was
recycled gold: goldsmiths used ancient coins, jewelry, or other
gold objects as their raw material. In the High Middle Ages, the
previously produced gold stock of Europe was primarily
accumulated in the court of the Byzantine emperors;
consequently, little gold was circulated in the Western world.
For coinage, for example, silver was generally used until the
13th century, when gold coinage was introduced in Italy, France,
and England. This gold, however, was not newly produced but
acquired through trade with the Arab countries, rich in gold
since the early Middle Ages. From the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, gold production in Europe increased alongside the
continuing importation of gold from the Arab world. A
significant quantity of gold was mined, especially in Bohemia
and Hungary, which two countries provided up to eleven twelfth
of the total gold production of late medieval Europe. Most gold
was produced by mining, but some gold was also gained by panning
(swirling the deposits of rivers around in a pan to separate
quartz from gold), especially in the Rhine area.
Silver, in contrast to gold, was produced continuously through
the Middle Ages in Europe, and even exported from there. In
addition to silver mines that played an important part in silver
production in the early and the High Middle Ages—Poitou
(Merovingian period), Sardinia (11th-12th c.), the environs of
Goslar, Germany (10th-12th c.), Freiberg, Saxony (12th-14th
c.),—rich silver mines were discovered in the second half of the
thirteenth century in Kuttenberg (Kutná Hora), Bohemia, which
supplied silver in great quantities until its decline, due to
the Hussite wars, in the fifteenth century.
Precious stones were acquired almost exclusively from
long-distance trade. Among the most frequently used stones,
rubies, sapphires, emeralds, turquoises, and diamonds came
mainly from the East: rubies were brought from India and Ceylon,
sapphires from Ceylon, Arabia, and Persia, emeralds from Egypt,
turquoises from Persia and Tibet, and diamonds from India and
Central Africa. Europe also produced a variety of gems and
semi-precious stones in the later Middle Ages. The source for
amethysts was Germany and Russia. Rock crystal came from
Germany, Switzerland and France, opals and garnets, from Eastern
Europe. Besides precious stones, also a great variety of less
valuable stones were frequently used, as it turns out from a
list of precious stones written by a Jewish merchant in 1453.
For precious stone decoration, goldsmiths very frequently used
also antique cameos and intaglios — precious or semiprecious
stones decorated with engravings or relief's—that survived
(often encased in older, medieval metalwork) in large numbers
and were highly sought after in the later Middle Ages. Cameos
were set into many types of jewelry as decoration, and often
reused again. Their usage is a evidence of the conscious attempt
to keep awake or revive the spirit of Antiquity. The popularity
of antique cameos and intaglios was, in fact, so high, that
medieval gem-cutting itself developed in emulation of the
classical models. However, Western European Middle Ages knew
only clumsy imitations of antique cameos, while in Byzantium
stone-carving remained a living tradition throughout the Middle
Ages. Byzantine carved stones were eagerly imported to the West.
Other raw materials for the decoration of jewelry included
freshwater pearls from Scotland, mother-of-pearl, amber—the
fossilized resin of pine trees—found in great quantities along
the Baltic coast, jet—the black fossilized remains of
trees—mainly from England and Spain, and coral from the
Mediterranean coast in North Africa
