Lecture Programme 2023

24 January

Rachel Church

The bright badge of courage: jewellery goes to war.

The decorative arts inevitably take a back seat during wartime. Times were difficult for jewellers and their customers in the First and Second World Wars. Precious metals were rationed, gemstones difficult to obtain, and jewellery factories were moved over to wartime production. Nevertheless, jewellery remained a key way for people to show their patriotism, keep their spirits up and protest against occupying forces. Wartime jewellery is a forgotten story of ingenuity, resilience and courage, from the sweetheart brooches of WWI to the Utility wedding rings and resistance jewellery of WWII.

28 February
AGM followed by

Richard Edgcumbe

This lecture was not recorded for future viewing

‘My beautiful sapphires’: Queen Victoria’s sapphire coronet commissioned from Kitching and Abud, 1840-42

In the early summer of 1842 Franz Xaver Winterhalter completed a portrait of Queen Victoria wearing around her chignon a sapphire and diamond coronet designed by Prince Albert and supplied by Kitching and Abud of Conduit Street, London. The portrait was an immediate success. Later that year a version, much reproduced, in which Victoria wore the insignia of the Order of the Garter with the coronet, was presented to Louis Philippe, King of the French. In 1866, as a widow, Victoria wore the coronet on the first occasion on which she undertook the ordeal of attending the Opening of Parliament after Albert’s death. In 1922, King George V presented the coronet, adapted by Garrard to be wearable as either bandeau or coronet, to his daughter, Princess Mary, on her marriage. The lecture will offer a brief history of the coronet and explore the background of Joseph Kitching and Richard Abud, who grasped the opportunity to furnish jewels to the young queen and her consort.

28 March

Vivian Watson

History of Hatton Garden

The ‘Garden’, as it is known by those who have worked there in the past or work there today, is a unique area of London. It has been associated with the diamond and gem trade, and the jewellery manufacturing industry, for generations.
Originally the site of the garden of Ely Palace, Hatton Garden became known throughout the world as the ‘go-to’ place for all aspects of the jewellery trade. In a similar way to other London industrial hubs such as Billingsgate for fish, Covent Garden for fruit and vegetables, Smithfield for meat, and Fleet Street for the Press, Hatton Garden was something of a marketplace, but was also an arena where you could learn about what was going on in the world of diamonds and gems. Unlike the food markets though, with their sights, sounds and smells assaulting the visitor, the true Hatton Garden is a secret world. At a time before mobile phones and modern technology, it was essential to be in close proximity with others, both for trade and for information.
In compiling an accurate history of the jewellery and diamond trade in Hatton Garden, one is faced with the reality that in many cases there is very little by way of a paper trail. Transactions were effected by word of mouth.
‘My word is my bond’ might well have been written for the diamond trade as much as ‘Dictum Meum Pactum’ was for the London Stock Exchange. Many deals were done in secrecy. Many were done illegally. Only inside knowledge can capture some of the remarkable stories of those who have in some way left their footprint in Hatton Garden.

23 May

Estelle Ottenwelter

Insight into early medieval elite jewellery from Bohemia

The technological investigation of the set of elite jewellery from the Lumbe´s Garden cemetery at Prague Castle enabled a better understanding of these highly complex, and lavish pieces of jewellery from the beginning of the tenth century AD. Fine jewels produced by highly skilled and knowledgeable jewellers co-exist alongside more coarsely manufactured imitations produced by less experienced craftsmen, revealing a process of a gradual acquisition of new technology, initiated, in all likelihood, by the arrival in Bohemia of specialised jewellers and by diplomatic gifts, most likely from Great Moravia, and probably from the Byzantine and the Islamic world.

27 June

Change of speaker. Patrick Davison will not be giving the scheduled talk.

Natasha Awais-Dean

Jewels captured in perpetuity: the jewellery book of Anne of Bavaria

Lecture postponed from 22 March 2022 and 24 January 2023.

In 1843, the Bavarian king Ludwig I (r.1825-1848) gifted an illuminated manuscript – the Kleinodienbuch der Herzogin Anna von Bayern to the Bavarian State Library, containing a pictorial inventory of 71 jewels that belonged to Albrecht V (1528-1579), Duke of Bavaria, and his wife Anna (1528-1590). Only one object survives – a collar of the Order of St George – but the importance of this manuscript is undeniable, revealing much more than written inventories or portraits alone can. This paper considers some of the jewels in their social and historical context.

26 September

Sébastien Aubry

Greek and Latin inscriptions on Antique Engraved Gems and Rings (Greek, Etruscan, Roman)

Lecture prevented from delivery at the SJH 'Texts' conference by traffic close-down

Inscriptions first appeared on Archaic Greek seals in the middle of the 6th century BC, and later found echo on Etruscan scarabs. Classical and Hellenistic Greek gems, as well as Italic and especially Roman intaglios, inherited from this double epigraphical lineage but diversified the forms and types.
On Graeco-Roman engraved gems and rings, there is a rather wide variety of Greek and Latin inscriptions, which present different configurations (formula, term, abbreviation, initial letter) and epigraphical particularities (crasis, monogram, abbreviation by contraction or suspension, nexus, letters switched, reversed – boustrophedon – or written into each other as so-called ligature). Even more noteworthy, these inscriptions can be classified between very many types of different natures : name of the bearer (duo or tria nomina, diacritic name or ὄνομα, designation referring to some slave or freedman, partial indication of the cursus honorum), dedication, acclamation, commemorative inscription, eulogy, invocation, prayer, addition to the engraved iconographic theme (didascalie), salutation, wish of good omen, prophylactic or apotropaic formula, confirmation of votive gift (ex-voto), loving or friendly motto, marriage and religious symbolism, numeral, trade mark or signature of the engraver, intrinsic function of the gem (seal, gift), legal norm and, finally, combination of ideographic and linguistic elements.
Presenting an overview as exhaustive as possible, the lecture shall bear witness to the wealth of inscriptions on Graeco-Roman gems and rings.

24 October

Cordelia Donohoe

New research on Tuareg jewellery

I plan to discuss the project I undertook in 2015 when I travelled to Niger to commission a jewellery collection from the tribal smiths of the ancient city of Agadez deep in the Sahara Desert. I had been researching the Berber peoples of North Africa and spending time in Morocco when I came across jewellery and artefacts from the Tuareg or the Blue men of the Desert who come from further into the Sahara bordering into Algeria/Mali and Niger. These smiths come from ancestral cultural, commercial and handicraft traditions which are still practiced today. I will outline how I developed the designs of the collection inspired by my research. I will speak about the smiths themselves born into their craft, the world they inhabit between tradition and modernity and how they continue their craft.

Kathleen Walker-Meikle

Pet Bling: Jewelled Animal Accessories in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Period

In this talk, historian Dr Kathleen Walker-Meikle will discuss animal accessories made from precious metals and stones, from cages to collars, which were available for the affluent late-medieval and early-modern pet owner to purchase or commission from their goldsmith. Some might reference contemporary human fashions or heraldry, while others might be traditional animal accessories, but ‘blinged up’. Drawing from a wide variety of sources, including inventories, accounts, and iconography, Kathleen will present the extravagant range of pet accessories of this period, from spaniels wearing pierced gold earrings to badgers sporting collars decorated with silver studs.

28 November

John Benjamin

Death, Diamonds and Devotion: Anglesey Abbey’s remarkable Collection of Jewelled Crosses

Believed to have been founded by Henry I in 1135, Anglesey Abbey was formerly the home of Huttleston Rogers Broughton, The Lord Fairhaven, who had purchased the Abbey in 1926 and lived there until his death in 1966 when the Estate and its contents were taken over by The National Trust. As part of an initiative to identify and catalogue all the jewellery in the Trust’s extensive property collections, John Benjamin was given access to a cabinet containing some 100 crosses purchased by Lord Fairhaven, as well as rare jewels and objets d’art, a project which has revealed some truly remarkable finds.

Links to previous Lecture Programmes

2026 | 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022
2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009
2005-2008 | 2000-2004 | 1995-1999 | 1990-1994 | 1985-1989 | 1980-1984 | 1977-1980