THE TIMELINE OF
JEWELLERY
THE WORLD’S CREATION,
DIAMONDS, GOLD AND SILVER
Diamonds were created approximately a billion years ago, during the
earth’s formation. In other words, diamonds were born long before
humans appeared on the planet. The diamonds that have survived
to the present day are those that moved towards the earth as a result
of volcanic movements that occurred while the world was still
forming. Gold, on the other hand, was found in streams and rivers
long ago because of how beautiful and bright it was. One of the first
known uses of silver in civilization was in the Aegean and
Mediterranean regions around 3000 BC, when mining led trade in the
ancient Aegean and Mediterranean seas.At that period, traders would
barter for products and services using rough-cut chunks of silver.
Order was developed as a result of the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural and pastoral economies that happened with the end of the Last Ice Age
and the onset of a temperate environment. Anatolia emerged as a major cultural force during the Neolithic Period. One of the oldest Neolithic periods in the globe is that of Anatolia. Based on this, we can infer that the jewellery and ornamental materials discovered during archaeological digs in Anatolia’s Neolithic centres are some of the world’s oldest.
Natural pure copper and lead were treated by cold forging and employed in the manufacturing of small tools and necklace beads in this procedure, in which stone tools were moulded by rubbing and abrasion and their functionality was increased by resurfacing. An illustration of this is the 9000 year old copper jewellery unearthed in Aşkl Höyük, close to Aksaray. It is natural, pure copper. At Anlurfa, the Neolithic settlements of Göbekli Tepe and Nevali Ori have been discovered. With the excavations that began in earnest after 1994, Göbekli Tepe’s true worth began to become apparent. Their investigations revealed that Göbekli Tepe was a cult centre with a 12,000-year history. The necklaces made of coarse-grained materials that can be seen on the female statue’s neck in this location are significant for illustrating the role and significance of jewellery in Neolithic civilization. The same statue’s eyes were given a more prominent appearance by having two pieces of obsidian inserted into its eye sockets. This example demonstrates that even obsidian, an extremely tough and dark stone, can be sized to the required size.
The first metallurgical activity began in Southeast Anatolia after copper was used to make tools, and to meet the rising demand, a process to separate minerals from their oxides by melting copper was devised. Some noble metals that are found in their natural, pure forms, like gold and silver, have also been refined and alloyed. Copper was the first mineral that people assessed. It began to be formed when it became apparent that it melted at a certain temperature, and after some time, moulds were employed to do this.
This is a crucial step in the creation of jewellery and other accessories. The birth of jewellery is also a result of these advancements. The Beyce Sultan mound near Denizli/ Civril was where the first pieces of precious metal jewellery discovered in Anatolia were discovered. The silver utilised in this piece of jewellery, which is a ring, is natural and pure silver.
In the alluvial plains of major rivers like the Nile in Egypt, the Nile in Mesopotamia, the Indus in India, and the Yellow River in China, city-states were established in 3000 BC. The dawn of civilization was at this time. At the tombs of Sumerian kings in the city of Ur, actual jewellery made of gold and precious stones have been discovered. Between 2600 and 2400 BC is when they are believed to have been created. It is believed that significant steps were accomplished in Anatolia after 3000 BC when numerous metals and
valuable stones, including gold and silver, were processed and used in jewellery manufacture. The most significant aspect of these priceless diamonds was the expert application of all the fundamental handcrafted jewellery techniques that are still in use today. The jewellery discovered in the tombs of
Malatya, Aslan Tepe, and Alaca Höyük at Alaca, orum, is the most significant Early Bronze Age find in Anatolia. It is a set of jewellery that also contains Horoztepe excavation finds from the Eskiyapar village of Orum, status objects, and religious artefacts. These jewellery items are the result of a distinctive aesthetic
that emerged during the Hittite era in central Anatolia’s north. Mesopotamian jewellery skills were used to create the treasure groups discovered from the Trojan Mound’s first two or three settlement levels. Its ornamentation and forms do, however, exhibit Aegean Island influences. The Kayseri Kartaltepe excavations contain the most significant Middle Bronze Age jewellery pieces. A second group consists of the gold artefacts found during the excavations in the Aksaray Acemhöyük Palace. These two groups, which date back to the Assyrian Trade Colonies era, exhibit Mesopotamian characteristics.
The Hittite empire fell during the great Sea Peoples migration, and their cities were burned and pillaged. Anatolia experiences a gloomy century after that. Four states and the cultures they established rise in Anatolia as a result of this process.
A) Southeast Anatolia’s Late Hittite City-States;
B) Central Anatolia’s Thracian-Origin Phrygians;
C) Western Anatolia’s Kingdom of Lydia and Ionian locations
The Hattians are Anatolia’s native inhabitants, whereas the Hittites are a different Indo-European group who arrived in Central Anatolia in the early first millennium BC via the Caucasus. Yet, when their culture merged with the Hatti over time, it gradually became to resemble them more. The city-states that were founded in southern Anatolia and the northern part of Syria after the Hittite Empire was violently overthrown were initially influenced by the Assyrian culture and then by the Aramaic culture. The majority of our knowledge of the male and female deities from this era comes from the tombs and the gods and people that are portrayed in the rock reliefs.
Despite Assyrian influences, the art of the Urartians, who established a strong theocratic kingdom in Eastern Anatolia, has a distinct style. Master jewellers, the Urartians, have a diverse jewellery repertoire covered in gold leaf on gold, silver, and bronze. Buttons, braacelets, hair and dress pins, earrings, medallions, and men’s rank marks are the most common pieces of jewellery in which animal figures are also used, where the granulation technique has been successfully applied.
The Phrygians, who are thought to have arrived in Anatolia with the sea tribes, made Gordion (Polatl) their capital. In the eighth century BC, Thracian and Phrygian tribes formed a powerful kingdom. The fibulae, which are used like safety pins to join pieces of clothing, are the Phrygians’ most important contribution to the history of world jewellery. This device was in high demand in the countries that existed at the time and spread across a large geographical area. Fibulas were used until the end of the Middle Ages, and examples in gold, silver, and bronze were made.
During the reign of Lydian King Kroisos (Krezus), the first gold refinery in Anatolia was built. This refinery’s pure gold and silver were used to create the first precious metal coins. The state coat of
arms is stamped on the coins, which changed the economy. The Lydian kingdom created the first coin, which quickly spread to other Mediterranean countries. Sardos, the Lydian capital known for its extraordinary wealth, became the cultural, art, and jewellery centre of its time. The Lydian jewellers’ jewellery models were used with variations until the Roman period. The most significant groups of this jewellery were discovered in Sardes Public Cemetery and Tumulus near Uşak Güre and Yoncalı.
At the beginning of the first millennium BC, the Ionian and Dor tribes moved to Anatolia’s Aegean coasts. They established themselves and began trading on the sea. The Ionian sites were the most developed in terms of culture and art. They created the naturalistic Orienatalizan style using the Urartian style they learned in the ports of Mosul and Syria. However, as creativity and trade expanded in the late 7th century BC, so did the variety of objects that could be decorated with art. It resulted in significant advances in silverware, jewellery, and handicrafts. Lydian art incorporated elements of the Orienatalizing style as well. The gold and silver offerings and ornaments unearthed from the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus are the most important group of finds from this period.
The Persians, who destroyed the Med kingdom in Iran, conquered the entire Arabian peninsula, Egypt, Central Asia, India’s Indus Valley, and Anatolia, establishing a vast empire. The Persian Governorates ruled over a portion of Anatolia during this time period. The Persians developed their own style by combining the artistic elements of the cultures they conquered. In Western Anatolia, this style evolved from the Greco-Persian style, in which animal figures were embroidered with soft expressions. The Attic-Delos Union reflected the cultural influence of Athens, which stopped the Persian invasion of Greece with the Salamis Naval Victory. As a result, he achieved excellence in all aspects of the arts, representing a diverse range of cultures. These classical jewelery products were created with decorations inspired by Archaic period models, and a level of perfection comparable to sculpture was achieved. During this time, the ancient city of Kyme, near Zmir’s Ali Aa district, was also a jewelery centre, producing unique gold jewellery designs. The gold jewelery discovered in the excavations of the ancient city of Kyme demonstrates that this city was a centre of jewellery workshops producing unique models. Dardanos, near Anakkale, was the second jewelery centre.
The Persian Empire was destroyed as a result of the Asian expedition that Macedonian King Alexander the Great launched by entering Anatolia in 330 BC. With this vast empire he had built, Alexander sought to unite various peoples and cultures. The Hellenistic style, which combined Greek and Middle Eastern arts, was born out of this idea. The price of gold was dropped as a result of the massive inventories of precious metals that were released from Persian treasury. The jeweler’s workshops, on the other hand, typically reflected the vibrant jewellery passion of eastern cultures by producing huge and extravagant gems employing enamel and precious stones. Through the employment of sculptural elements, intricate ornamentation, coloured stones, pearls, and enamel, classical gold jewellery took on a fresh appearance.
The extravagant jewellery of this era included body jewellery that covered the entire body, gorgeous men’s diadems, hair jewellery that covered the head like a skullcap, and locking bracelets. With Alexander’s demise, his generals broke up his empire, which also separated the Hellenistic kingdoms. The two most significant hubs for the manufacture of jewellery throughout this process were Antiokya (Antakya) in Anatolia and Alexandria in Egypt. Due to financial constraints, the usage of precious stones rose during the Hellenistic period while jewellery became simpler.
The Romans used their occupation or protection policies to add the Hellenistic kingdoms to their empires beginning in Macedonia and Greece in the second century BC. In accordance with the former king’s wishes, the Pergamon Kingdom in Western Anatolia comes under the control of the Roman Senate. The Hellenistic era ends in 27 BC with the conquest of the Egyptian kingdom, yet the Hellenistic civilization endures for a very long time. Jewelery could not develop since the use of gold in opulent creations was prohibited by law throughout the Roman Republic era. Women were, nevertheless, heavily ornamented with jewels throughout the Roman Imperial period due to the thirst for wealth and ostentatiousness. The Romans, on the other hand, were a meticulous civilization, and their jewellery designs reflected this. Roman jewellery forms, which date back to the first century BC, are straightforward but extravagant and designed to draw attention to themselves. This strategy led to the abandonment of surface ornamentation methods like filigree and granulation and an increase in the use of colourful stones.
The most popular jewellery is rings that are employed as seals because of the bureaucratic nature of Roman society.
Byzantium, on the Bosphorus, became the second capital under the Roman Emperor Constantine, and the city, which grew as a result of the reconstruction efforts, was given the name Constantinople in honour of its creator. In 395, the empire was split into Western Rome and Eastern Rome, with Constantinople emerging as the Eastern Roman Empire’s capital. The heritage of Rome became Eastern Rome, or “Byzantine,” as 19th-century historians refer to it, when the Western Roman Empire fell due to the impacts of tribal migration. Medieval Christian art is known as Byzantine art. The interpretation of both Hellenistic and Roman cultures as well as the cultures of the people distributed across three continents within Christian ideas, however, resulted in a potent synthesis. There are four stages to studying Byzantine art.
1) Early Period: The 4th to 6th century Roman Imperial period’s cultural and artistic legacy is obvious. The hospitable climate that Constantinople’s status as the nation’s capital gave also helped the period’s top artists find a following. Theodosian regulations that have been published state that “no tax will be levied on jewellery and glass makers is an example of government incentives offered for jewellers,” however during this period of transition, jewellery products still exhibit characteristics of late antiquity. Rome in
Italy, Alexandria in Egypt, and Antioch in Anatolia were the three most significant jewellery hubs of the time. (Antakya).
2) Mid Term: It was created between the years 84 and 204. The impact of ancient art declines as Christian themes and symbols take its place. Constantinople is currently the heart of the jewellery industry because of this process, when the empire was at its richest and most powerful. The split enamel technique, a distinctive Byzantine jewellery design, was created by this approach in the emperor’s jewellery studios in the Great Palace with outstanding aesthetic achievement. In addition to enamel, Byzantine jewellers employed jade, turquoise, amber, opal, and pearls intensely together with other valuable stones including diamonds, rubies, and sapphires to produce multicoloured effects. The distinctive quality of these jewels is that the ornamental stones’ natural shapes are created by simply shaping and polishing them with minimal human interference.
3) Byzantine Late Period With the invasions of the Visigoth and Muslim Arab armies beginning in the 7th century, the Eastern Roman Empire rapidly lost territory and dwindled. During the Fourth Crusade, it shrank as a citystate. Byzantium’s economy suffered as a result of these earthquakes, and in 1453, Ottoman Emperor Mehmet the Conqueror conquered Constantinople, erasing Byzantium from history. Jewelery fell throughout the Late Byzantine period, which comprised this period of deterioration and collapse, and true jewellery products were substituted by straightforward jewellery made of bronze and gilded with silver, as well as glass bracelets.
With the foundation of the Anatolian Seljuk Kingdom as a border principality in 1299, the Ottoman Empire’s history officially began. In 1345, the Ottomans captured the Byzantine territories surrounding them and expanded their borders to include Thrace, the Balkans, and the Greek peninsula. They seized Constantinople and made it their capital in 1453, under Mehmet the Conqueror. The Ottoman Empire expanded to encompass three continents with the conquests of Yavuz Sultan Selim and Suleiman the Magnificent in the Middle East and Central Europe. After the First World War was won, the empire, which had been in decline from the middle of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th, was occupied, and the Republic of Turkey, which had been founded following the War of Independence, took its place.
It is difficult to find information regarding Ottoman jewellery prior to the first half of the 15th century. Mehmed the Conqueror enacted a law that “restricted the amount of silver available to jewellers to 200 dirhams” in an effort to regulate precious metals and limit their use in opulent items. a word is located. This restriction is considered to be a savings strategy to pay for military operations. The usage of jewellery and precious metals in the Palace and its environs rapidly developed after the 15th century as a result of the products arriving from Ragusha, the largest jewellery hub in the Balkans, and the presence of certain Ragusha jewellers in Istanbul.
Around the start of the 16th century, Yavuz Sultan Selim led campaigns against the Mamluks in Iran and Egypt, and as a result, the Ottoman treasury was brimming with jewellery and Works of precious metal. Istanbul Jewelry saw a turning point with the introduction of significant artists to the Ottoman palaces in addition to these prizes. Ottoman jewellery started to appear around the world in the 16th century as a result of the Ottomans selling their own creations in areas that had been annexed to their territory. The jewellery produced is stunning and dazzling. The planned sculptures were often fabricated from gold and silver using precious stone processing.
The evolution of jewellery progressed in two directions during the Ottoman era: inside the palace and outside the palace.
The group of artisans known as ehl-i hiref was one of the many service classes present in the Ottoman palace. One of these categories, dealing with handicrafts, was founded by jewellery. “Ehl-i hiref,” or those who engage in handicrafts, were novices who were given to the palace during devshirme and those who were hired were trained by the masters according to their abilities. In the beginning, the per diem paid to recruits was quite low. His everyday existence was enhanced in accordance with his abilities as he developed as an artist, and they eventually rose to the rank of journeymen and masters.
The residents of the Bîrun neighbourhood, which is located between the Middle Gate of the Topkapi Palace and the Akaalar Gate, included jewellers. By selecting the most skilled members of the devshirme, jewellers were trained. They were known as the jewellers’ heads. Yet, none of the cultivated ones were used to select the jeweler’s head. He was chosen from the group of seasoned, competent, and dependable jeweller craftsmen working outside the palace. The palace jewellers were under the chief jeweler’s control and instruction. The head of the jeweller examined and valued the jewels that were to be manufactured as gifts for foreign kings and those that were to be purchased for the palace.
It is clear from the documents that there were numerous master jewellers working in those days, and they established various sections inside the ehl-i hiref organisation. The “Zergeran” division, which worked with gold, was one of these. He oversaw the Mehmet the Conquerorestablished treasury ward at Topkapi Palace and served as its chief treasurer. One of the most powerful people in the palace was the head treasurer. The palace, which had a population of roughly 2000 and served in the palace, He was in charge of overseeing the preservation of the Enderun treasury, which contained the palace’s jewels and other valuables.
Every new sultan since Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror has visited the treasury. First, the treasure treasury would deliver the key, the Yavuz seal would be examined, and then the door would be opened with a special ceremony, the lock being sealed with his seal. Yavuz Sultan Selim’s testament, which states, “Whoever comes after that fills the treasury that I filled with gold with mangr, let the wealth be sealed with the seal of the moment and continue to be sealed with my seal,” is in conformity.
The orders or repairs of the major Enderun aghas were occasionally handled by the palace jewellers in addition to those from the harem and the monarch. The masters who performed the labour received payment for each task they completed. Sultans visit Medina and Mecca An important custom of the Ottoman Empire administration was the annual dispatch of Surre-i Hümayun (those who carried aid and presents from Constantinople to Mecca and Medina). Because of this, the sultans had the jewellers and workshops in their palaces create the most expensive pieces of jewellery at the beginning of the Ottoman era.
We can list the ones manufactured for the Cardigan-i Sharif, the ones made for the sultans personally, and the ones made to be sent to the Kaaba among these. In the 17th and 18th centuries, lavish invitations were extended in European palaces with ostentation at the forefront. To emphasise the exhibition of the outfits in invites, multi-cut and multi-colored jewellery is necessary. As a result, the process of coating the back results in the stones’ brightness being increased.
We know that ladies typically wore long chains, necklaces, pearls, earrings, and brooches with flower and bouquet designs embellishing the headgear based on the limited local materials we have from the pre-19th century.