Filigree Necklace
Place of origin: Calicut, India (made)
Date:ca. 1850 (made)
Materials and Techniques:
Gold wire, with stamped florets and applied flat discs and hemispheres
Notes from the V&A
This gold necklace was one of the earliest Indian objects bought for what would become the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was exhibited at the 1851 Great Exhibition as “modern” work from Calicut, and was bought for the considerable sum of £30 for the new South Kensington Museum as an example of the best international contemporary design. The jeweller has manipulated a relatively small amount of gold to maximum effect to create interlinked motifs of filigree to which very small elements have been applied. These were made by hammering pieces of thin sheet gold onto a metal die over shaped depressions thereby producing identical motifs.
(via rentless-mistress)
