Lectures Online

All lectures from March - June 2020 were postponed due to the corona virus lockdown. From September 2020 - June 2021 lectures were resumed but were only available live online via zoom. All lectures have been recorded, together with questions from the audience, and are available to members here (members only).

All members are sent an email with details of how to login in advance of each lecture. Please let the Membership Secretary know if you would like to be added to the list at membership@societyofjewelleryhistorians.ac.uk.

We have now returned to Burlington House, but will continue to make lectures available online simultaneously, and load all past online lectures here.

Lectures available online

2026

23 June

Mary Davis

Heirlooms, antiques and relics: dress accessories in the Galloway Hoard

The Galloway Hoard, discovered in 2014 in southwest Scotland, has transformed our understanding of the kingdom of Northumbria during the Viking Age. Buried c. AD 900, the Hoard contains about 5kg of silver bullion in the form of Hiberno-Scandinavian arm-rings and ingots. But the objects packed inside a silver lidded vessel within the Hoard are truly unique: silver disc brooches, curated heirlooms, amulets of rare materials, and precious fragments of textiles. This talk will review what ongoing research at National Museums Scotland can tell us about how jewellery was worn, repaired and handed down in the heart of the Viking Age.

26 May

Gerardine Mulcahy-Parker

Jewellery created by two modern sculptors, Alfred Gruber (1931-1972) and Jacqueline Stieger (b.1936)

For sculptors Alfred Gruber and Jacqueline Stieger, their meeting in Switzerland in 1962 marked the beginning of a fruitful relationship. Through collaborative experimentation, they learnt to stretch the possibilities of sculpting materials and exploit the transformative qualities of common and precious metals. The creation of art jewellery was a natural departure and by 1966 it was featuring in exhibitions of their work. Having settled in England, Gruber registered their maker’s mark in 1970. Sadly, he died shortly after. Their distinctive jewellery had caught the attention of Graham Hughes, Art Director of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, whose ongoing support proved invaluable. This talk will discuss the sculptural evolution of Gruber Stieger jewellery and Stieger’s ongoing career, when art jewellery played an increasingly important role in her sculptural output.

22 April

Joint lecture with the Silver Society.

Kieran McCarthy

Carl Fabergé and the art of silver

While Carl Fabergé is world-renowned for his elaborate jewelled creations, his extensive work in silver is often overlooked. Yet silver was central to the operations of his firm, with production spanning both its St. Petersburg and Moscow workshops. The vast silver workshop in Moscow, employing hundreds of craftsmen, was so prolific it was referred to as a “factory”.
In this lecture, Kieran will explore the remarkable range of materials used by Fabergé, including some unexpected ones, with a special focus on the firm’s diverse and often exquisite works in silver. He will delve into the workshops involved in their creation and examine the variety of silver objects produced, from elegant tableware to enamelled pieces evoking the folkloric charm of ‘Old Russia.’

24 March

Diane Venet

Artists’ Jewelry - from Cubism to Pop

An artist’s jewel, like a painting or sculpture, is a true work of art — born from the same creative impulse, carrying poetry, humour, and emotion. Its worth lies not in carats or sparkle but in artistic vision. From Picasso to Kapoor, Koons to Dali, my collection of over 220 pieces, gathered over 30 years, celebrates this playful yet rigorous dialogue between art and adornment. Each creation reflects an encounter — with artists or collectors — revealing a world where art transcends itself. Through exhibitions worldwide, I hope to inspire new connections and discoveries in this vibrant realm of artistic jewellery.

24 February

Florent Guérif

The Parisian House of Fouquet, illustrating an art of jewellery between 1860 and 1937

Alphonse Fouquet (1828–1911), a highly regarded designer and modeller, conceived his jewellery as works of art, drawing inspiration from various historicist themes of the late 19th century. He passed this cultural heritage on to his son, Georges Fouquet (1862–1957), who surrounded himself with visionary artists who played an essential role in developing a new art form in jewellery. In collaboration with his son, the avant-garde designer Jean Fouquet (1899–1984), he spearheaded a resolutely modern collective movement in which jewellery once again served an ornamental function.

27 January

Alexandra Watson Jones

Loot, trophies and royal gifts: Ethiopian Jewellery in UK collections

This talk examines a selection of Ethiopian jewellery found in Britain’s national collections today, including at the V&A and National Museums Scotland. It considers jewellery looted from Ethiopia during a famous 1868 military expedition, items acquired during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in the 1930s, and pieces sent to Britain as gifts by Ethiopian Emperors. The talk explores how and why these objects have been collected and displayed by British individuals and institutions, and how they reflect changing political and diplomatic relationships between Britain and Ethiopia.

2025

25 November

Jane Adam

Forever Changes

Jane Adam is known for her distinctive jewellery in dyed anodised aluminium and precious metals. Her work explores balance — between symmetry and irregularity, surface and structure, the individual and the universal. Jane’s pieces are deeply connected to the wearer, combining technical mastery with emotional resonance. She continues to challenge perceptions of preciousness through colour, form and thoughtful design.
Her work is held in numerous major collections and is worn and enjoyed by women and men internationally.
Jane’s talk will consider times when her work has changed, in response to personal, social, economic or cultural influences, and how it continues to develop as she looks into the future.

28 October

Eliot Benbow

Everyday Jewellery and Dress Accessories in Later Medieval London

This lecture will consider the wide ranges of inexpensive jewellery, dress accessories and devotional objects available for purchase by Londoners in the Later Middle Ages. Such cheap jewellery was made from the 14th – 16th centuries, many pieces carrying devotional iconography or other meanings. They ranged from the ever-present pilgrim and devotional badges, medallions and other related objects, to finger rings, brooches, mounts, buckles, purses and the wide range of devotional beads known as paternosters or bedes. While many were made in and around London, large quantities were imported from the Low Countries. The paper will highlight how producers and merchants sought to engage with a vibrant demand for items of personal adornment across a wide swathe of London society.

30 September

Helen Molesworth

Cartier: Inspiration and Innovation

27 May

Cristina Filipe

Portuguese Contemporary Jewellery in 'dialogue' with the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection

This lecture concerns the exhibition 'Guest Summer: Contemporary Jewellery in Portugal' curated by Cristina Filipe at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon. Its aim was to create a dialogue between contemporary jewellery, made between 1958 and 2018, and artwork from the museum’s modern and contemporary collections as well as its René Lalique works. Like the exhibition, the talk will offer a brief and straightforward 40-year overview of the subject matter and its affinities with the collection.
The Calouste Gulbenkian Museum organised this exhibition on the occasion of the presentation of Cristina Filipe’s book 'Contemporary Jewellery in Portugal: From the Avant-Garde to the Early XXI Century' in 2019.

25 March

Beth Wees and Sheila Smithie

Marcus & Co.: Three Generations of New York Jewellers

The New York firm of Marcus & Co. (1892–1942) created exceptional jewellery for an art-loving, wealthy elite. Travels throughout India in 1895 inspired their first distinctive body of design, featuring elaborate gold and coloured stone jewellery. In the following years, annual visits to the Paris Salons and encounters with the work of Lalique, Colonna, and Vever resulted in an original response to the Art Nouveau style. This lecture will focus on the firm’s most productive and original period, under the leadership of the family’s second generation. Surviving jewellery and archival drawings from two sources reveal new aspects of the firm’s history.

25 February

Emma Rutherford

Jewelled frames and painted jewels in Tudor and Stuart Portrait Miniatures

Portrait miniatures were secret, portable, often exquisitely painted likenesses, housed in elaborate and costly lockets. The jewels worn by the sitters often conveyed hidden meanings, as well as love, status, loyalty or power. Miniatures were objects that had the ability to communicate meaning and the way in which they were worn aided that purpose. This can be seen in the words of a 16th-century observer, Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who recalled, with an evident frisson, how a lady at court he admired wore his miniature ‘about her neck so low that she yet hid it under her breasts’.
In her talk, art historian Emma Rutherford will discuss the settings for portrait miniatures, which, as an art form, began in the 1520s. Nicholas Hilliard, who was trained as a goldsmith, is of particular interest and was responsible for the image of Queen Elizabeth I from the 1570s. Emma will also look at the jewels worn by sitters in early miniatures and how they were painted by the artists who observed them at first hand.

28 January

Niamh Whitfield

Celtic Revival Jewellery in mid-19th-century Dublin: The role of Waterhouse & Company

In the mid-19th century, replica jewellery based on local archaeological finds became fashionable in Ireland, as elsewhere in Europe. The principal models were highly decorated brooches found in Ireland dating from the Early Middle Ages. A major manufacturer and retailer of such replicas was Waterhouse and Company, which had opened a Dublin branch in 1841. Its business was given a major boost by its purchase in 1850 of a brooch more splendid than any earlier find which they named the Royal Tara Brooch. This talk will include extraordinary new evidence about its acquisition from Waterhouse family records.

2024

26 November

Tonia Marek

African beads and their roles in rituals

Have you ever wondered how colonisers of Africa could have exchanged what they called ‘trinkets’ like glass beads for precious gold?
This talk will explore the importance of beads in sub-Saharan Africa through their historical value and their worth in every stage of life, from birth until death. Beads, like African masks, are appreciated in western culture for their aesthetic nature. However, beads, like masks, also often carry spiritual values in their traditional, historical contexts. They are charged with special meanings and are an inherent part of rituals. This talk will thus provide the audience with a different way to look at African beads and a new appreciation for their value as cultural heritage. Many of the beads that will be presented come from such diverse and venerable origins as Venice and Bohemia.

24 September

Jane Kershaw

Viking-Age jewellery and the women who wore it

In this lecture, I will explore female Scandinavian jewellery dating to the Viking-Age (c. 750-1050), from both Scandinavia and areas where the Vikings settled. I will consider the techniques involved in the production of elite brooches and pendants in gold and silver, and examine the evidence for the serial production of base-metal brooches and pendants in a range of art styles. I will further consider the source of the metals used to create the jewellery, drawing on recent metallurgical analyses. Of central importance is the status of this material as items of female dress: the jewellery offers evidence for the migration of Viking women, while subtle changes in the form and style of jewellery found in Viking overseas settlements shed light on instances of cultural contact.

25 June

Carolina Naya Franco

The jewels of the Treasury of the Pillar at the Victoria & Albert Museum

In 1967, Charles Oman, Keeper of the Department of Metalwork at the Victoria & Albert Museum, published an article in the Apollo magazine detailing the public auction of the Treasury of the Virgin of the Pillar, held in early June 1870. He vividly recounted the pivotal moments surrounding the acquisition of jewellery in Saragossa by representatives of the V&A (then known as the South Kensington Museum). Following this ground-breaking article, only fragmented information had surfaced until my doctoral thesis, completed in 2015. In this presentation, I will delve into a comprehensive review of the acquisitions made in London and also share intriguing anecdotes.

28 May

Beatriz Chadour-Sampson

Jewellery by Johann Karl and Karl Thomas Bossard, Lucerne, from Historicism to Art Deco 1868-1934

Johann Karl Bossard (1846-1914) came from a family of goldsmiths in central Switzerland going back to 1775 in Zug and since 1830 in Lucerne. After taking over his father’s workshop in 1868, he led the company to great success; in 1901 his son Karl Thomas (1876-1934) continued the business. With the rise of tourism on Lake Lucerne, Bossard attracted an international clientele, ranging from the high society, European aristocracy, renowned collectors to museum curators. In 2013 the Swiss National Museum, Zurich, acquired the Bossard estate which includes several thousand drawings, models, casts, templates and fascinating list of clients. The focus of the talk will be on the jewellery designs with an emphasis on historical styles.

23 April

Frances Parton and Dora Thornton

Working with The Goldsmiths' Company Jewellery Collection 1961-2024

The Goldsmiths’ Company jewellery collection began with the ‘International Exhibition of Modern Jewellery’ held at Goldsmiths’ Hall in 1961. Since then, the collection has grown into an outstanding body of modern and contemporary jewellery in precious metal, with a focus on pieces by independent studio artists rather than the work of large jewellery houses. Over the last five years, efforts to research and promote the collection have led to a series of significant gifts. Most recently, the Dorothy Hogg ‘Tree Project’ has shown the way the Goldsmiths’ Company and its jewellery collection can successfully record and honour the important legacy of a major contemporary teacher and jeweller.

27 February

Melanie Eddy

Meditations on Form: Reflections on the geometric explorations of a contemporary jeweller

Melanie Eddy first launched her signature style of faceted and folded forms in the summer of 2007, developed whilst undertaking an MA: Design at Central Saint Martins College. These initial explorations and meditations on how we engage and respond to sculptural forms on the body have led to an immersion in geometry. Both to create her signature forms but also as a key to comprehend the vast world around us. Known for her abstract pieces, her work is imbued with meaning - contemplations on materiality often reference experiences of places or memories, and at times pieces reflect wider rumination and thoughts.

23 January

Sarah Laurenson

Crafting colour worlds in Scottish Stones

During the 18th and 19th centuries, Scottish jewellers used colourful stones – including agates and Cairngorm quartz – to craft luxury goods. This talk explores how the colours of these materials played a key role in shaping the design and making of jewellery objects, and in fostering new ways of seeing the Scottish landscape. Tracing these minerals on their journey from hill and coast into the workshop, the focus is on how jewellers and lapidaries sourced and worked these materials, developing new skills, driving design innovation and contributing to geological knowledge in the process.

2023

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.

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.

24 October

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

2022

25 October

Saltanat Amir and Abidemi Babalola

Recent Research on Beads.

Each speaker presents a 30-minute paper about recent research.

Iron Age Saka microbeads became a well-deserved star of the “Gold of the Great Steppe” exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge) last year, fuelling debate among members of the public and specialists about their manufacturing technologies. Being truly micro - the diameter of some do not exceed 1 mm - they seemed to play a significant role in Saka society, and were manufactured in their thousands. Considering the amazing variety of their shapes, meticulous manufacturing technologies and their massive production at the Iron Age steppe amazingly little is known about them outside of Kazakhstan. Through my presentation, I will show you the beauty of Saka microbeads, and explore their production and use.

Glass beads are luxury objects that commanded great importance in early West African societies. Archaeological excavations at Igbo Olokun, Ile-Ife, SW Nigeria, yielded several thousand glass beads from a context dated to the 11th -15th centuries. The association of the glass beads with production waste suggests production at the site. The assemblage provides a new insight on the complete sequence of glass bead making, from glass making to bead making, in medieval West Africa. This talk will discuss the stages of production and the technology of the glass. Mass-production of glass beads, for the first time, introduced West African-made glass beads into the regional and long-distance economy. The proliferation of glass beads in early Ile-Ife inspired a bead culture that was expressed in the arts and culture of the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria.

28 June

Karl Schmetzer

The late-14th-Century Royal Crown of Blanche of Lancaster.

A richly bejewelled crown preserved in the Treasury of the Munich Residence offers a window into aspects of both the broader world of European dynastic history and the narrower field of decorative practices and gemstone use. The crown’s history can be traced from the late 14th-century court of Richard II and his wife Anne of Bohemia in London to its role as part of the dowry in 1402 of Blanche of Lancaster, bride of the future Elector Palatine Louis III. The gem materials decorating the piece, one of few extant examples of Late Middle Ages royal regalia, were determined to be blue sapphires, pink sapphires, pink spinels, garnets, emeralds, diamond octahedra, and pearls. Several types of imitations for green and pink gemstones and diamonds were present as well. The forms of the stones also reflected the transition in fashioning occurring as the Late Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance.

24 May

Sophia Adams

Creative Clasps? The story of prehistoric brooches in Britain.

Brooches first appear in Britain almost 2,500 years ago in the Iron Age. Their design, and the materials from which they are made, highlight oscillating relationships across the Channel and further afield. Theirs is a story of bronze, iron, glass and coral; a story of creativity and connections. In this presentation I will focus upon the craft of the brooches and the contexts in which they are found. By examining the detail of these small artefacts, we can explore the relationships between makers, wearers, the natural world and the archaeological story of pre-Roman Britain.

22 March

Jack Ogden

Setting the record straight.

This talk will cover changing ways in which gemstones were set in jewellery from the earliest times until the end of the Renaissance. These changes reflected aesthetic preferences, of course, but more particularly, advances in gem cutting technology. There was also fluctuating access to different gem types as trading patterns changed. When seen in this light, the history of gem-setting can be understood as a key part of jewellery and gem history, underlining that jewellery history must be seen holistically, a happy blend of art and technology.

22 February

Rebecca Roberts

Jewellery and power in Iron Age Kazakhstan.

During the 1st millennium BCE, the Saka-Scythians of East Kazakhstan built monumental burial mounds on the grassy expanse of the steppe. In these mounds they buried elite members of their society with thousands of gold adornments. From microscopic beads to weighty torcs, the largely nomadic Saka expressed wealth and power through adorning their bodies and those of their horses, who often died with them. Power and status, however, are determined by the living. This talk will draw on material from the ‘Gold of the Great Steppe’ exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum (opening September 2021) to explore the clues to Saka social, cultural, and economic life as expressed through their jewellery.

25 January

Tim Schroder

Jewels at the Court of Henry VIII .

Henry VIII’s posthumous inventory contained thousands of sumptuous jewels and precious stones and in some ways we know more about them than we do about his gold and silver plate because of their depiction in royal portraits. But the term ‘jewel’ did not only apply to items of adornment. The finest plate was often set with gems and two of the four surviving pieces of goldsmith’s work known to have belonged to the king – the clock salt in the Goldsmiths’ Company Collection and a mounted rock-crystal bowl in Munich – are exactly what would have been described at the time as ‘jewels’.

2021

23 November

Ute Decker

Sculptural Minimalism & Fairtrade Gold — philosophy, provenance and process .

The Goldsmiths' Craft & Design Council Design Award winner in 2020, Ute Decker’s work is a meditation on the richness of simplicity. Self-taught, she first exhibited her wearable sculptures in 2009 at the age of 40, and quickly earned international recognition as “the architectural jeweller” for the sweeping scale and ambition of her minimalist sculptures. She is also one of the very first jewellers in the world to work with Fairtrade Gold. In this talk she will discuss her creative philosophy and how a background in political economics and journalism led her to become a leading voice in the international ethical jewellery movement.

26 October

Akis Goumas

Crossing paths with the prehistoric craftsman: learning and experimenting with ancient jewellery of the Aegean region and its influence on me and my work .

Akis Goumas is an award-winning Athenian jeweller, gemmologist and researcher in ancient goldsmithing techniques of the Aegean region. He is a member of a multidisciplinary group of archaeologists, archaeological scientists and conservators studying different categories of ancient metalwork, including prehistoric metal technologies of the Aegean region, working at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens and the Cycladic Museum of Art, and Hellenistic goldsmithing techniques at the Benaki Museum of Athens. In this talk he will describe some of the investigations he has taken part in and also show how his own jewellery and designs have been greatly influenced by this research.

28 September

Charlotte Gere

Colour in Victorian Jewellery .

Although diamonds and pearls remained the choice at court and among the social elite, colour defines fashion and modernity in mid-Victorian jewellery design, through historicism and archaeological revivalism, to Orientalism, the exotic cultures of India, Japan and the Islamic world. In the 1850s, jewellery was in decline. The Middle Ages and English Renaissance offered models that would shape a contemporary idiom and realise the aims of Design Reform. New sources of coloured stones, particularly cabochon garnets, enabled jewels to complement brilliant dye-colours in dress. Revived enamelling techniques further enhanced the colour palette. ‘Pebble’ collecting fed a taste for regional novelties. The Language of Flowers, plant hunting, horticulture and hybridisation encouraged accurate representation of nature in precious materials and coloured gems. Fashion is less important than etiquette or sentiment. Intrinsic value and display denoted taste and culture, success and wealth in a significant new audience for jewellery, the increasingly prosperous middle class. Colour was, however, controversial, and jewellery offers an opportunity to examine Victorian attitudes to one aspect of the discussion.

22 June

Mary Cahill

Finding function - the interpretation of gold ornaments from Late Bronze Age Ireland .

While gold is an important element of the metalwork of the Early, Middle and Late Bronze Ages in Ireland, the amount remaining from the later period is extraordinary. Most of this gold survives in the form of personal ornaments, many with no known function, at least not one that can be determined from strictly archaeological evidence. This lecture will re-examine the forms these objects take and propose uses for them. It will also suggest that in some cases inspiration came from bronze pieces which were re-interpreted to form distinctive ceremonial objects made of gold, a metal imbued with power and magic derived from the sun.

25 May

Sash Giles

Jewels of the Devonshire Collection.

The Cavendishes have been at Chatsworth since 1549. This lecture will focus on pieces which demonstrate the changes in fortune and taste which have shaped the collection as it is today. The speaker will show pieces made for marriages, worn to coronations and photographed by Cecil Beaton, as well as discuss pieces no longer in the collection and touch on some of the reasons why. She will discuss examples from the 1500’s to the present and introduce pieces associated with Bess of Hardwick, William, 2nd Duke of Devonshire, Richard, 3rd Earl Burlington William, 6thDuke and Duchesses Evelyn, Mary, Deborah and Amanda and explain why Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire is absent from this list.

27 April

Carol Michaelson

Chinese jade jewellery and ornaments from the Neolithic to the Present.

Chinese jade jewellery: A chronological survey. Jade has been prized in China since Neolithic times. In the West diamonds, gold and silver have usually been the most valued materials but, for the Chinese, jade has long been at the top of the hierarchy of the materials they most treasured. Jade working began in China probably over 5,000 years ago in the north-eastern part of what is China today. Over the succeeding millennia both nephrite and jadeite jade have been fashioned into jewellery and amulets, both worn in lifetime and buried with the owner for use and protection in the afterlife. This lecture will look at how this tactile but very tough material has been used over time.

23 March

Rui Galopim de Carvalho

A Preview of the Gemstones at the Portuguese Royal Treasury.

After decades of being kept closed in a secret vault, the royal treasures of Portugal, including the crown jewels, personal jewels of the monarchs and other precious items, were properly cleaned by an expert conservation team and all the thousands of gemstones tested. In this talk, you’ll be offered a private gem-related sneak peak of what to expect in the forthcoming permanent exhibition at the new Museu do Tesouro Real - Palácio Nacional da Ajuda, in Lisbon, Portugal.

23 February

Jack Ogden

The Black Prince’s Ruby: Investigating the Legend.

The 170 carat red spinel set in the Imperial State Crown in Britain’s Crown Jewels is known as the ‘Black Prince’s Ruby’ and is one of Britain’s best-known gems. It has been popularly associated with Edward the Prince of Wales — the ‘Black Prince’— who lived in the 1300s. An oft-repeated legend links the gem back to its presentation to the Prince in Spain in 1367 and tells of how Henry V wore it on his crown at the famous Battle of Agincourt in 1415. But how much, if any, of the legend can be verified? And when was this legend first recorded? This talk looks back through renaissance and medieval sources to try to separate fact from fiction. It will question whether we can identify the gem among the confusingly large number of large spinels that reached royal treasuries in the later medieval times, and evaluate its supposed continuous history down through its various owners, including Pedro the Cruel in Spain and Elizabeth I in England.

26 January

Jonathan Boyd

I Can’t String a Sentence Together: Jewellery and Words/Words and Jewellery.

Jonathan Boyd is a multi-award-winning artist and jeweller working in a variety of materials specialising in conceptual and narrative-led jewellery and objects. He is also the Head of Programme in Jewellery and Metal at the Royal College of Art. For over 10 years Jonathan has explored the two languages of words and jewellery through objects where meaning and form are inseparable. Reflecting these difficult, unusual and hyper-modern times, Jonathan will be presenting via zoom using image, video and virtual montage to best exploit the possibilities presented by a digital format.

2020

24 November

Mouza Al-Wardi, Marcia Dorr, Aude Mongiatti and Fahmida Suleman

Adornment, Identity and Empowerment: Female Silversmiths in Southern Oman.

Throughout the Arabian Peninsula, silversmithing is almost universally identified as a male occupation, although a large proportion of the articles produced are for women. However, there is a relatively unknown, endangered tradition of female silversmithing in the Sultanate of Oman. In this talk, we will share some of our early research findings from an ongoing collaborative project supported by the British Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum and the National Museum of Oman on the last surviving female silversmiths of Dhofar, southern Oman.

27 October

Lynne Bartlett

Titanium the magical metal.

In this talk, the jeweller Dr Lynne Bartlett describes her research into titanium, a metal that has been widely used in jewellery since the middle of the twentieth century, and which she uses in her own work. Titanium has been mainly appreciated for its colour potential, and recent decades have seen its increasing use as a lightweight metal for setting diamonds. The talk outlines the early history of its use, highlighting the different techniques employed, and present research into the behaviour of the surfaces of titanium before and after colouring, explaining why the effects achieved can be variable.

22 September

Niamh Whitfield

The ‘Tara’ brooch: the making of an early medieval masterpiece from Ireland.

Dating to around AD 700, the 'Tara' brooch is the creation of a virtuoso. Working on a minute scale, its maker prized intricate and precise design for its own sake, and used so many different techniques that it can be regarded as a masterpiece in the true sense of the word, demonstrating his range of skills. When it was displayed in London in 1863, one of the Castellani brothers remarked that it had been ‘worth the journey from Italy to see it’. This talk, based in part on unpublished research, shows why Castellani was so impressed.

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