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Introduction: Gems in the Early Modern World

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Gems in the Early Modern World

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Abstract

This chapter introduces the history and historiography of gems in the early modern world. We set the scene by analysing how Europe and Europeans became integrated into the global trade in gems in the early modern period. We then survey the changes that occurred in the art, science, and technology of gems in Europe in the same period. The connections between these changes and the growing global trade in gems were subtle but significant. Elaborating on these connections is one aim of the chapters in this volume. Another is to focus on knowledge about gems, with a view to unifying a secondary literature on gems that is divided along disciplinary lines. Finally, we aim to show the importance of the materiality of gems to their history.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This paragraph and the following one are based on Tijl Vanneste, “Diamonds in South America,” from an unpublished book manuscript, and on a manuscript transcribed by Tijl Vanneste and communicated to the authors. The manuscript is from Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (Paris), Mémoires et Documents, Portugal (vol. 2), p. 340.

  2. 2.

    David Jeffries, A Treatise on Diamonds and Pearls (London, 1751), esp. 65–87. For an inventory of later editions of this treatise, see John Sinkankas, Gemology: An Annotated Bibliography (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1993), vol. 1, 511–13.

  3. 3.

    J. Demeste, Lettres au Dr Bernard sur la chymie, la docimasie, la cristallographie, la lithologie, la minéralogie et la physique en general (Paris, 1779), vol. 1, 407–9 (“tous les joailliers”, crystal structure, electricity). John Ellicot, “A Letter from Mr. John Ellicot, F. R. S. to the President, concerning the Specific Gravity of Diamonds”, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 43 (1744): 468–72, esp. 470 (East India Company diamonds). Georges Buffon, Histoire naturelle des minéraux, vol. 4 (1786), 266 (crystal structure, refractive index, ambassador). Mathurin-Jacques Brisson, Pesanteur spécifique des corps: ouvrage utile à l’histoire naturelle, à la physique, aux arts et au commerce (Paris, 1787), 62–4 (several crown jewels).

  4. 4.

    Pauline Lunsigh Scheurleer, “Twee oosterse sieraden uit de stadhouderlijke verzameling”, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 44 (1996): 15–26. Our thanks to Suzanne van Leeuwen, curator at the Rijksmuseum, for informing us about the history of the collection.

  5. 5.

    Godehard Lenzen, The History of Diamond Production and the Diamond Trade (Barrie & Jenkins Ltd, 1970), 36–7 (Red Sea and Persian Gulf to Mediterranean), 39–40 (Ural mountains), 41 (China via Sri Lanka and Thailand), 42 (map of diamond trade routes in antiquity).

  6. 6.

    Ibid, 61 (merchant’s handbook), 62 (thirteenth-century trade), 83 (thirteenth- and fourteenth-century trade).

  7. 7.

    Ibid, 37-8. Cf. George Winius, “Jewel Trading in Portuguese India in the XVI and XVII Centuries”, Indica 47 (1988): 15–34, on 33.

  8. 8.

    Winius, “Jewel Trading”, 22 (importance of Goa), 24 (local rulers), 23 (“Portuguese merchant”), 16, 22–3 and 29 (advantages of Goa-Lisbon route). João Teles e Cunha, “Hunting Riches: Goa’s Gem Trade in the Early Modern Age”, in The Portuguese, Indian Ocean and European Bridgeheads: Festschrift in Honour of Prof. K.S. Mathew, ed. Pius Malekandathil and T. Jamal Mohammed (Lisbon: Fundação Oriente, 2001), 269–303, on 290 and 295 (size of Goa market at its peak), 281, 291 (freedom of Portuguese trade), 291–6 (brief regulation of Portuguese trade).

  9. 9.

    Vanneste, 47, cf. Gedalia Yogev, Diamonds and Coral: Anglo-Dutch Jews and Eighteenth-Century Trade (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1978), 70.

  10. 10.

    Yogev, chap. 5, cf. Vanneste, 45–7.

  11. 11.

    Ralph Fitch, “The Long, Dangerous, and Memorable Voyage of M. Ralph Fitch”, in Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations Voyages Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903 [1599]), vol. 5, 465–505, on 498–9. Cf. Bruce Lenman, “England, the International Gem Trade and the Growth of Geographical Knowledge from Columbus to James I”, in Renaissance Culture in Context: Theory and Practice, ed. J. R Brink and William F Gentrup (Brookfield, VT: Aldershot, 1993), 86–99, on 93–4.

  12. 12.

    Vanneste, Global Trade and Commercial Networks, 45.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., 50–7.

  14. 14.

    François Farges, “Les grands diamants de la couronne de François I à Louis XVI”, Versalia 16 (2014): 55–79; Bernard Morel, “Les diamants des monarchies européennes”, in Diamants: au coeur de la terre, au coeur des étoiles, au coeur du pouvoir, ed. Hubert Bari and Violaine Sautter (Paris: A. Biro, 2001), 237–93.

  15. 15.

    Yogev, Diamonds and Coral, 102 (EIC). Vanneste, “Diamonds in South America”, table entitled “Diamond Production in Brazil.”

  16. 16.

    Yogev, 120 (unofficial Brazilian diamonds). Winius, “Jewel Trading”, 15.

  17. 17.

    Michèle Bimbenet-Privat, Les orfèvres et l’orfèvrerie de Paris au XVIIe siècle (Paris, 2002), vol. 1, 93–6 (Henry IV), 106–7 (Mazarin); vol. 2, 396 (Mazarin), 414 (Louis XIV).

  18. 18.

    Karin Hofmeester, this volume (Hellemens). Vanneste, Global Trade and Commercial Networks, 48 (Chardin), 100, 140–2.

  19. 19.

    Archives Nationales, T/1490/18, p. 846r.

  20. 20.

    Yogev, Diamonds and Coral, 89.

  21. 21.

    Both phenomena were observed in 1612 by the Flemish merchant Jacques de Couttre: Winius, “Jewel Trading”, 20.

  22. 22.

    Vanneste, “Diamonds in South America”, 12–13.

  23. 23.

    Winius, “Jewel Trading”, 28n31.

  24. 24.

    Ibid., 24 (agents in Goa).

  25. 25.

    Vanneste, Global Trade and Commercial Networks, 43–4.

  26. 26.

    The example is drawn from Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (Yale University Press, 2009), chap. 9. For other examples of cross-cultural exchange in the early modern diamond trade, see Vanneste, Global Trade and Commercial Networks, esp. chap. 3.

  27. 27.

    Robin A. Donkin, Beyond Price: Pearls and Pearl-Fishing: Origins to the Age of Discoveries (American Philosophical Society, 1998), 28 (map 1), 62 (map 15).

  28. 28.

    Ibid., chaps. 9 and 10, esp. 276–80 (cultural references), 280 (Montaigne quoted; “in control”), 314–14 (Columbus and pearls).

  29. 29.

    Kris E. Lane, Colour of Paradise: The Emerald in the Age of Gunpowder Empires (Yale University Press, 2010), 27 (inferior Old World emeralds), 52–9 (seizure of Muzo mines), 81 (1580–1640 zenith of global emerald trade), chap. 4 (merchants and shipping), 129–30 (emeralds for rubies), 135–8 (emeralds for diamonds). Cf. on emeralds in Goa, Cunha, “Hunting Riches”, on 292.

  30. 30.

    Arash Khazeni, Sky Blue Stone: The Turquoise Trade in World History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2014), 13, chaps. 2 and 4.

  31. 31.

    On coral and amber in the works of Pliny, see Bycroft’s chapter in this volume, Sect. 1. On early modern amber, see Rachel King, “Whose Amber? Changing Notions of Amber’s Geographical Origin”, Kunsttexte.de/Ostblick 2 (2014): 1–22. On the reciprocal trade in diamonds and coral, see Yogev, Diamonds and Coral, 102–9; and Trivellato, Familiarity of Strangers, chap. 9.

  32. 32.

    Jack Ogden and Michael Spink, “Techniques of Construction and Decoration in Islamic Jewellery”, in Michael Spink and Jack Ogden, The Art of Adornment: Jewellery of the Islamic Lands: Part One (Nour Foundation, 2013), pp. 87–8; Jack Ogden, Jewellery of the Ancient World (London, Trefoil Books, 1982), pp. 143–50.

  33. 33.

    Fritz Falk, “The Cutting and Setting of Gems in the 15th and 16th Centuries”, in Princely Magnificence: Court Jewels of the Renaissance, 1500–1630, ed. Victoria and Albert Museum (London: Debrett’s Peerage and Victoria and Albert Museum, 1980), 20–6, on 20. Cf. Fritz Falk, Edelsteinschliff und Fassungsformen im späten Mittelalter und im 16. Janhrhundert. Studien zur Geschichte der Edelsteine und des Schmucks (Ulm: Verlag Wilhelm Kempter KG, 1975). Falk’s earliest dates for the invention of faceting (certainly 1406, possibly 1381) are over a century earlier than the date (1538) given by an earlier authority, namely Lenzen, Diamond Trade and Production, 71–81.

  34. 34.

    P. Grodzinski, “The History of Diamond Polishing”, Industrial Diamond Review 1, Special supplement (1953): 1–13.

  35. 35.

    Karin Hofmeester, “Shifting Trajectories of Diamond Processing: From India to Europe and Back, From the Fifteenth Century to the Twentieth”, Journal of Global History 8, no. 1 (2013): 25–49, on 34–9 (Venice, Antwerp, Amsterdam, London). Lenzen, Diamond Trade and Production, 71–81 (Bruges, Paris, Antwerp). René de Lespinasse, Les métiers et corporations de la ville de Paris, vol. 2 (Paris, 1892), 82 (creation of Paris guild). There was also a diamond-cutting guild in Venice before 1582: Salvatore Ciriacono, “Diamonds in Early Modern Venice: Technology, Products and International Competition”, in History of Technology, vol. 32: Italian Technology from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century, ed. Anna Guagnini and Luca Molà (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 67–86, on 71–2.

  36. 36.

    Recueil des statuts, ordonnances, règlemens et privilèges, accordez en faveur des marchands orfèvres jouailliers de la ville & fauxbourgs de Paris (Paris, 1688), 584.

  37. 37.

    Falk, “Cutting and Setting”, 20 (fourteenth-century table cuts). Herbert Tillander, Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry: 1381–1910 (London: Art Books, 1995), 130–68 (brilliant cuts).

  38. 38.

    On the V&A Museum’s collection, see the catalogue in Princely Magnificence: Court Jewels of the Renaissance, 1500–1630 (Debrett’s Peerage Limited in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1980). On the Green Vault, see Christine Nagel, Schmuck der sächsischen Kurfürsten um 1600: Untersuchung zum Umgang mit Schmuck und dessen Funktionen im Rahmen fürsterlicher Repräsentation und Kommunikation (Berlin: dissertation.de, 2009). On European court jewels in general, see the following recent surveys: Diana Scarisbrick, Christophe Vachaudez, and Jan Walgrave, Brilliant Europe: Jewels from European Courts (Brussels: Mercatorfonds, 2007); Morel, “Diamants des monarchies européennes.”

  39. 39.

    Brigitte Buettner, “Precious Stones, Mineral Beings: Performative Materiality in Fifteenth-Century Northern Art”, in The Matter of Art: Materials, Technologies, Meanings, ca. 1250–1600, ed. Christy Anderson, Anne Dunlop, and Pamela H. Smith (Manchester University Press, 2014), 205–22.

  40. 40.

    Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, Orientalism in Early Modern France: Eurasian Trade, Exoticism and the Ancien Regime (Oxford, 2008), 231–43, 255, cf. 187, 257–9.

  41. 41.

    Baroque pearls: Donkin, Beyond Price, 264, 268, 276, citing Peter Stone, “Baroque Pearls”, Apollo 67 (1958): 194–9, 69 (1959): 33–7, 107–12. Etymology of “baroque” as an art movement: Kerry Downes, “Baroque”, in The Oxford Companion to Western Art, ed. Hugh Brigstocke (Oxford University Press, 2001), retrieved 19 Feb 2018, www.oxfordreference.com. Rococo diamonds: Hans Sedlmayr and Hermann Bauer, “Rococo”, in Encyclopedia of World Art (New York: MacGraw Hill, 1966), vol. 12, 230–74, on 239. Neo-classical crystals: Emma Spary, “Capturing and Interpreting Crystals in French Collections, 1760–1800”, presentation at Victoria and Albert Museum, 12 April, 2016. Cf. Diana Scarisbrick, Jewellery in Britain, 1066–1837: A Documentary, Social, Literary and Artistic Survey (Wilby: Michael Russell, 1994), 252 (baroque-rococo-neo-classical sequence in British jewellery).

  42. 42.

    Scarisbrick, Jewellery in Britain, 233–4 (diamonds in Britain). Donkin, Beyond Price, 276 (baroque pearls). Pierre de Rosnel, Mercure Indien (Paris, 1667), vol. 2, 29.

  43. 43.

    The medieval lapidary tradition is summarised in Frank D. Adams, The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences (Baltimore, MD: The Williams & Wilkins Company, 1938), chap. 4. Cf. Joan Evans and Paul Studer, Anglo-Norman Lapidaries (Paris: Champion, 1924). On the lapidary tradition in the sixteenth century, see Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923–1958), vol. 7, 298–324.

  44. 44.

    On these developments and the ones described in the next paragraph, see Michael Bycroft, Gems and the New Science: Craft, Commerce and Classification in Early Modern Europe, unpublished book manuscript.

  45. 45.

    Hofmeester, “Shifting Trajectories”, 33 (Duyts). Cuhna, “Hunting Riches”, 293 (stones cut in Europe), 295 (European cutters in Goa).

  46. 46.

    Khazeni, Sky Blue Stone, 110.

  47. 47.

    Farges, “Grands diamants”, 64.

  48. 48.

    Annelies De Bie, “The Paradox of the Antwerp Rose: Symbol of Decline or Token of Craftsmanship?”, in Innovation and Creativity in Late Medieval and Early Modern European Cities, ed. Karel Davids and Bert De Munck, 269–93 (Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2014), 279–80. Cf. Tillander, Diamond Cuts, “Introduction.”

  49. 49.

    Nuno Vassallo e Silva, “Jewels for the Great Mughal: Goa a Centre of the Gem Trade in the Orient,” Jewellery Studies 10 (2004): 41–51, on 47 (Maximilian III), 49–50 (filigree and enamelling).

  50. 50.

    Marjolijn Bol, “Gems in the Water of Paradise: The Iconography and Reception of Heavenly Stones in the Ghent Altarpiece”, in Christina Currie, Bart Fransen, Valentine Henderiks, Cyriel Stroo and Dominique Vanwijnsberghe, eds., Van Eyck Studies: Papers presented at the Eighteenth Symposium for the Study of Underdrawing and Technology in Painting, Brussels, 19–21 September 2012 (Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2017), 34–48.

  51. 51.

    Bruce Lenman, “England, the International Gem Trade and the Growth of Geographical Knowledge from Columbus to James I”, in Renaissance Culture in Context: Theory and Practice, ed. Jean R. Brink and William F. Gentrup (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1993), 86–99.

  52. 52.

    On Boyle, see the chapter by Sabel in this volume. On Boodt, see the chapter by Bycroft in this volume, and Sven Dupré, “The Art of Glassmaking and the Nature of Stones: The Role of Imitation in Anselm De Boodt’s Classification of Stones,” in Steinformen: Natura – Materia – Artificio, ed. Maurice Sass, Iris Wenderholm and Isabella Augart (Berlin: De Gruyter, forthcoming).

  53. 53.

    These two books are Lane, Colour of Paradise and Marcia Pointon, Brilliant Effects: a Cultural History of Gem Stones and Jewellery (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009).

  54. 54.

    For examples of imitation and fake gems, see Marjolijn Bol, “Coloring Topaz, Crystal and Moonstone. Factitious Gems and the Imitation of Art and Nature, 300–1500”, in Fakes!? Hoaxes, Counterfeits and Deception in Early Modern Science, ed. Marco Beretta and Maria Conforti (Sagamore Beach: Science History Publications, 2014), 108–29, on 124–8, discussing the imitation gemstones set on the Westminster Retable, ca. 1250; Hazel Forsyth, The Cheapside Hoard: London’s Lost Jewels (London: Museum of London, 2013), 68–76. The Cheapside Hoard includes counterfeit balas rubies (red dyed rock crystal) and a jewel with red and green pastes (glass). See also Anne-Françoise Cannella, Gemmes, verre coloré, fausses pierres précieuses au Moyen Age. Le quatrième livre du ‘Trésorier de Philosophie naturelle des pierres précieuses’ de Jean d’Outremeuse (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2006).

  55. 55.

    The following examples are discussed in Ronald W. Lightbown, Mediaeval European Jewellery with a Catalogue of the Collection in the Victoria & Albert Museum (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1992), 11–22.

  56. 56.

    Iris Kockelbergh, Eddy Vleeschdrager and Jan Walgrave, eds., The Brilliant Story of Antwerp Diamonds (Antwerp: Ortelius, 1992), 29.

  57. 57.

    The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge, 1986), especially Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commodization as Process”, 64–91. For itineraries, see especially Mobility, Meaning and Transformations of Things. Shifting Contexts of Material Culture Through Time and Space, ed. Hans-Peter Hahn and Hadas Weiss (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2013).

  58. 58.

    Objects in Motion in the Early Modern World, ed. Daniela Bleichmar and Meredith Martin, special issue of Art History 38, no. 4 (2015); Early Modern Things: Objects and Their Histories, 1500–1800, ed. Paula Findlen (New York and London: Routledge, 2012); The Global Lives of Things: Material Culture in the First Global Age, ed. Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello (New York and London: Routledge, 2015).

  59. 59.

    Writing Material Culture History, ed. Giorgio Riello and Anne Gerritsen (Bloomsbury, 2015), 113.

  60. 60.

    Tim Ingold, “Materials against Materiality”, Archaeological Dialogues 14 (2007): 1–16; Ursula Klein and Emma C. Spary, Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe: Between Market and Laboratory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); Ann-Sophie Lehmann, “The Matter of the Medium: Some Tools for an Art Theoretical Interpretation of Materials”, in The Matter of Art: Materials, Technologies, Meanings 1200–1700, ed. Christy Anderson, Anne Dunlop, and Pamela H. Smith (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), 21–41.

  61. 61.

    For new luxuries, see among other works, The Spinning World: A Global History of Cotton Textiles, 1200–1850, ed. Giorgio Riello and Prasannan Parthasarathi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Marcy Norton, Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008); Maxine Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

  62. 62.

    Craig Clunas, “Precious Stones and Ming Culture, 1400–1450,” in Ming China: Courts and Contacts, 1400–1450, ed. Craig Clunas, Jessica Harrison-Hall, and Luk Yu-Ping (London: British Museum, 2016), 236–44, on 238–9.

  63. 63.

    Donkin, Beyond Price, 204 (map 24).

  64. 64.

    Examples are treatises by al-Biruni (973–1048) and al-Khazini (fl. c. 1115-c. 1130). On these treatises, see respectively Mariam Rozhanskaya and B. A. Rosenfeld, “On Al-Biruni’s Densimetry”, in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 500, no. 1 (1987): 403–17, and H. Carrington Bolton, “The Book of the Balance of Wisdom”, Chemical News 34, no. 872 (1876): 59–62. On early modern Persian treatises on gems (javahirnama), see Khazeni, Sky Blue Stone, chap. 2.

  65. 65.

    Gül Irepoglu, Imperial Ottoman Jewellery: Reading History through Jewellery (Istanbul: BKG, 2012); Siebenhüner, Kim, Die Spur der Juwelen. Materielle Kultur und transkontinentale Verbindungen zwischen Indien und Europa in der Frühen Neuzeit (Cologne-Weimar, 2018); The Jewels of India, ed. Susan Stronge (Bombay: Marg Publications, 1995); Goieielli dall’ India: dai Moghul al Novecento (Milan: Galleria Ottavo Pisano La Rinascente, 1996).

  66. 66.

    Donkin, Beyond Price, 1–8 (raindrops), 306–7 (pearls in Americas). Clunas, “Precious Stones and Ming Culture”, 240–1.

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  1. History Department, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Michael Bycroft

  2. History of Art, Science and Technology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Sven Dupré

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  1. History Department, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Michael Bycroft

  2. History of Art, Science and Technology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Sven Dupré

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Bycroft, M., Dupré, S. (2019). Introduction: Gems in the Early Modern World. In: Bycroft, M., Dupré, S. (eds) Gems in the Early Modern World. Europe's Asian Centuries. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96379-2_1

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