Tuesday, March 25, 2008

All is Not What It Seems

In a past post, I wrote about how the 1854 gold standard was lowered. As a result of this change in the amount of gold required for jewelry to be officially 'gold', gold items became easier to make. Before that govenment issue however, jewelers creatively developed a way to make gold jewelry appear to have more gold than it did:

The following is from this site:http://antiquesshop.org/victorianjewlery.htm

The Romantic period (1837-1860) in Victorian jewelry was sparked by the wedding of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1840. Since the supply of gold was inadequate at that time, thin sheets of gold were worked upon to impart the illusion of mass and size to the jewels of the early Romantic period.

It seems more research must be gathered in order to make a full understanding of what happened then. Time will tell!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

History can sure be confusing, eh?

I'm sure there's a logical reason somewhere!

I await your updates daily!