ORIENTAL AND ENGLISH JEWELLERY.
IT must be a difficult thing, even for a practised speaker, to make a good speech to a trade, not to be too shoppy and yet to be specially interesting to his audience; and Mr. Cham- berlain, in his address of Saturday to the Jewellers' Association of Birmingham, succeeded beyond expectation. He beat out his gold rather thin, perhaps, confining himself mainly to information picked up on his recent travels ; but still, he pleased his audience, who were delighted to learn that their
craft was one of the oldest in the world, and would much rather hear that they had been outdone by artists coeval with the Pyramids, than that they were undersold by next-door neigh- bours coeval with themselves. Chit-chat about the ornaments worn by Queen Aar Hotep of Egypt, and the parures of the Trojan ladies, must have been acceptable to jewellers, and Mr. Chamberlain never bores, even when talking antiquarianism. It is a pleasant speech, too, to read; but we are not quite sure that we coincide altogether in the practical ideas by which he gave his address the utilitarian flavour supposed to be needful when a Member of Parliament is speaking. He evidently thought that if the jewellers trained the artisans sufficiently, they would ultimately secure the Oriental perfection of work- manship and design; but is that true ? Must we not also -condition for something of the Oriental changelessness ? Mr. Chamberlain, we fancy, imagines that there existed in Egypt and on the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean, castes of artists; but that is, we should contend, an exaggerated view. There were hereditary castes of specialists who, by repetition -continued through ages, became, in certain patterns, fault- less workmen, acquiring, no doubt like the glass-workers of Murano, an instinctive aptitude for their work ; but the -caste-men were hardly artists. We take it the Egyptian, and, indeed, the Asiatic method of producing perfect work, was nearly of this kind. A specially skilled designer, some- times a true artist, sometimes only an inheritor of a good design, had the fortune to please a King, or an influential priest, or a great lady with a pattern, and thenceforward that pattern was the pattern, in all its essential specialties unchangeable. It was repeated through generations, sometimes through centuries, till those who used the design acquired some- thing more than skill in it, an instinct for it, and could have reproduced it when sleeping or nearly drunk, as accurately as when awake or sober. Such patterns made taste, stereotyping it, as it were, so that the market was perpetually kept open, and the art began to decay only with the decay of the general fortune, or with that lassitude as to everything, workmanship included, to which all races hitherto studied have been found liable. We shall hardly obtain such changelessness here, where a thousand new influences pour in every day ; and not -obtaining it, we shall hardly obtain the perfection of the best Oriental jewellery. The men who made it lost their capacity when change arrived, just as the enamellers of India, feeling as they do the influence of new standards of taste, can no 'onger rival their marvellous ancient work.
Where, moreover, are we to get the taste from ? A small -caste among us may acquire the power of appreciating Oriental jewellery to the full ; but will that appreciation, in the absence -of the central condition, the intense Asiatic sunlight, ever become general. Mr. Chamberlain himself evidently does not feel it to the full, for on one essential point he rejects the Asiatic view. The reason why the colours in an Oriental brooch or bracelet are so perfect, is precisely the reason why an old Oriental carpet is better than any other. An Asiatic hates to be dazzled, to be blinded with glare, to have his eyes hurt and his brain heated by unsubdued effects of light. Consequently, though he dyes his wools in intense colours, having few others, he so combines them, so mixes them with black, and with that dark cream which Europe has never caught the secret of, that the total result is restful, and the very idea of glare, or of full daylight on the patterns, is entirely absent. It is precisely the same with the Oriental jewels. Their natural glare is kept down by combination and want of polish. Mr. Chamberlain describes the Asiatic habit of setting gems uncut as a mark, the only mark found among the jewellers of Asia, -of an inferior taste ; but is not that criticism the criticism of a Northern European ? The Asiatic who carved in jade and sunk deep inscriptions on the sapphire, could have facetted precious stones just as well as the cutters of Amsterdam, who till lately used no machinery ; but he did not want to do it. He wanted subdued effects, and made of the garnet a carbuncle—which is a miracle of colour without glare—or he cut off, as in many emeralds we have seen, a mere -corner, so that the beholder, instead of being bothered with flashing green in his eyes, should peep at will into green depths. We do not say he was altogether right—as regards the diamond, he was altogether wrong—but we may rely on it he knew his business, and when he failed, intended to fail. His intense appreciation of turquoise was due not only to admiration for its colour—which, after all, can be matched only by one or two flowers—but to its being the one gem that, for all its brilliancy of colour, does not flash. To this hour, the high-class Asiatic loves the cat's-eye as the European can never do, because the light in it gives no pain, but reveals itself through a sort of dusky shade. The European has made lovely jewels, and will make lovelier, but he will never make the same jewels as the Asiatic, who with inimitable art will take from gold all its glitter without diminishing by one iota the perfection of its shade of colour, and will hand you a bit of enamel in which the green is as bright as the emerald, the red as fiery as the ruby, and the whole as restful to the eye as a piece of turf. The Oriental jeweller had another merit, too, on which Mr. Chamberlain might have dwelt, for in it lies the secret of a possible great development in the demand for European jewellers' work. He always gave to his jewels certainty of value. His gold was gold of unalterable purity, his silver truly silver of the standard, his stones the stones they professed to be, his work paid for at an understood and invariable rate. The consequence was that he made little, but that the market for his commoner wares never ceased, jewels being as much " property " as English sovereigns now are, equally portable, nearly as capable of concealment, and as fixed in value. A great noble could fly from province to province with nothing but a casket, and not only always remain rich, but always be able to raise cash at a few hours' notice. So could a peasant, though his jewels would only be necklaces of silver and narrow bracelets of gold. Any money-changer would take them any- where in Asia ; and even if he traded on the applicant's necessity, he would not attack the quality of an article known to be unimpeachable. That is the secret of the diffusion of jewellery in Asia ; and it would, we are convinced, were the same principle adopted, be the key to a great trade here. We are not now talking of grand gems mentioned in wills and specially examined for probate, but of the ordinary jewels of the middle class. Let the buyers but be con- vinced past all question that a brooch has a definite and unchangeable value, as a five-pound piece has when used as a shawl-fastening, and ten brooches would be sold where one is now. As it happens, the opportunity for making this change is now immediately at hand. Mr. Chamberlain hinted that the long-hated duty on plate would disappear this year, and with it the necessity for using the hall-mark. The former change will delight buyers, but the latter will appal them, unless the trade instantly avail themselves of their new privilege. Let every manufacturer replace the hall-mark with his name, and plain figures indicating the precise quality and weight of his gold or silver. That will then be marketable at its value without debate or demur, the only chaffering being over the value added by the work- manship,—will, that is, down to a certain fixed minimum, be " property " like a note or a State bond. The taste for jewels is as universal in Europe as in Asia, and is restrained among the middle class only by a sense of its extrava- gance. A bracelet, the man thinks, is a mere gaud, never convertible into money except at a ruinous sacrifice, or at all events a sacrifice of which he does not know the extent. The Asiatic, on the contrary, buys the bracelet not only as an ornament, but as the most portable and most easily convertible form of property. He buys, in fact, as our own miners in good years buy solid walnut or oak furniture, with one eye to adornment, and another to the pledge on which a pawnbroker will certainly advance money. This motive has little to do with taste, or may even debase taste by introducing a fancy for "solid" jewellery; but it is one which manufacturing jewellers such as those Mr.
Chamberlain addressed would find it their direct interest to cultivate. Only to succeed in that desire they must be rigidly honest, must make their trade-marks clear, and must never pardon any imitation of them. The Asiatic dealer is spared all trouble in that respect, for his customers have learned to know one particular quality in each metal, and at any other they will not so much as look ; but in Europe the jeweller would have to be as careful as a banker who issues his own notes.
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