ABSTRACT
During the nineteenth century, the increased demand for jewellery as a status symbol, a marker of aesthetic and moral consciousness, as well as evidence of monetary value ensured continual changes in its fashionable designs. The principles which the people asserted in the commencement of this book, apply quite as much to jewellery as to gold and silver work, ceramic art, and other branches of decoration and ornament. If symmetry is necessary anywhere it is particularly required in jewellery, because art is represented in infinitesimal proportions, and the tenuity of the jewel is frequently its most exquisite charm and most valuable quality. No doubt ingenious labyrinths of ornament can be invented and applied to architectural decoration, after the manner of the Arabians, in mural surfaces, doors, open enclosures, and friezes. A mysterious significance was attached to rings and to certain jewels, which were unobtrusive, and therefore easily hidden in times of persecution.
