When creating garb, some often think of accessories as well and want to complete their looks with different time appropriate fineries. I'm no different in that sentiment. I've only just recently started to dabble in the fancier garb of late period Spain and Italy. I wouldn't say it's something I want to wear all the time, but having something beautiful for court is important. To complete the look I'm going for, I decided to make some matching jewelry that represents my household. So here's a little background...
House Strangewayes has a household heraldry of a bee on an oak leaf, in black and gold. This is our household badge, a way to identify ourselves at events. We have silk banners we use, and have many items in our encampment decorated with bees. This year our Birka theme just so happens to be household heraldry. Wearing black and gold of course is a given, but incorporating the bees is something I also wanted to do; so I did a little perusing on the internet for examples of Italian renaissance jewelry.
These are the three examples I went with. From the right, Francesco Pietro Bissolo -
Portrait of a Young Woman, circa 1500. Ambrogio de Predis -
Portrait of a Woman, circa 1490, and Andrea Solario -
Salome with the head of John the Baptist, circa 1506-7.
In all of these, you can see pearls. Lucky for me I had a ton of them sitting in my jewelry making kit, just waiting to be put to use. In the first painting,
Portrait of a Young Woman you see small pearls, and another alternating small gem. I liked this detail of the necklace and kept that in mind.
In the second painting,
Portrait of a Woman the use of larger pearls caught my eye. As I'm not too fond of the simple pearl strand (as elegant and timeless as it may be), I moved on for a little more inspiration.
I then found
Salome with the head of John the Baptist. The alternating bead size, and the pendant in the center are what really caught my eye. Looking closely, the black beads are oddly shaped but from afar it looks like small black beads between larger pearls. As I didn't have any beads shaped like the ones shown on Salome, I let the creative part of creative anachronism do the rest.
With what I had available, and using the design aspects I observed in the paintings, I came up with the following piece:
This was my attempt, and my reasoning behind designing it this way was due to a few different design aspects I had discovered in my, albeit limited research. The shape and length of the necklace was easy. Most of the paintings I had seen all had a close fitted pearl strand as the necklace, so that wasn't difficult to decide on.
The alternating colored gems in
Portrait of a Young Woman inspired me to do the same with some red, imitation beads I also had available.
The alternating pearl size wasn't something I could easily document, but in
Salome with the head of John the Baptist the pearls are larger, and the pearl above the pendant is larger than the other pearls. I just reinterpreted that in my own way, and thus the necklace you see if what I came up with.
Instead of making a pendant, I used a gold enamel bee I had bought at the craft store, to officially tie in the household heraldry. I showed it to my household and they all seem to like it too. So with a little anachronism, and a little creativity I present to you, my Italian Renaissance jewelry.
Thanks for reading!
