Replica of Taj Mahal model, India 19-20th century. Beautiful Silver filigree art

Beautiful Silver filigree art
Traditionally, Italian, Russian, Indian and French metalwork masters made delicate lace like jewellery metalwork art pieces from 1660 to the late 19th century. In fact, filigree has become a special branch of jewellery in modern times. However, historically it was a part of the ordinary work of a jeweler. The stunning jewelry of the Greek and Etruscan filigree of the 6th to the 3rd centuries BC preserved in the Louvre and in the British Museum. Italian and European silver from seventeen-twenty century is mostly silver artworks of precious and rare unique silver filigree works.
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Exquisite Ancient jewelry art of Afghanistan

Ancient jewelry art of Afghanistan

Tillya tepe means Golden Hill, an archaeological site in Afghanistan near Sheberghan, surveyed in 1979 by a Soviet-Afghan mission of archaeologists led by Victor Sarianidi. The hoard contained about 20,000 gold ornaments found in six graves (five women and one man) with extremely rich jewelry art pieces, dated to around the 1st century BC. Several thousand pieces of recovered fine jewelry were made of gold, turquoise, lapis-lazuli. The ornaments included coins, necklaces, belts, medallions and crowns.

Some of the finds are a part of the traveling exhibition titled “Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures From the National Museum, Kabul”, first displayed in 2006 in France’s Musee Guimet in Paris, in Washington, D.C. from May 25th to Sept. 7th, 2008; and from Oct. 24th, 2008 to Jan. 25th, 2009 the collection was at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
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Tryakshara Ganapati in Delightful Disposition. Brass Sculpture

Ganesha in Indian art. Ganesha is a popular religious figure in Indian art. He is portrayed standing, dancing, taking action against demons, though having a playful behavior. Ganesha has the head of an elephant and a human body with a big belly. He has four arms, sometimes more. Ganesha carries various weapons, but is not known to have ever used them. The earliest known stone statue of Ganesha with an inscription dated to 531, found in northern China. In Japan the Ganesha cult was first mentioned in 806. Statues of Ganesha are found in Hindu art of Java, Bali, Borneo, Burma, Cambodia, Thailand. 5th century image of Ganesha was found at Gardez, Afghanistan. In Buddhist Thailand, Ganesha is regarded as a remover of obstacles, the god of success.
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1820-1830 brooch. Italian micro mosaic jewelry

Italian micro mosaic jewelry

Micro-mosaic is painting, laid with tiny pieces of glass called tesserae. In some cases, the number reached 5000 per square inch (2.54 x 2.54 cm). This technique which came into vogue in the 17th century and flourished in the 18th century in the Vatican Mosaic workshop, continues to this day. Also there were workshops in Venice and Florence. Micro mosaic jewelry became popular in the 17-19 centuries in connection with the fashion for travel among the aristocracy. From their trips travelers brought souvenirs – micromosaic depicting historical sites, or sent to their relatives as postcards with pictures on them. Especially popular were the Italian ruins.
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XIX century artwork by Russian jeweler Ivan Petrovich Khlebnikov

Russian jeweler Ivan Khlebnikov (1819 – 1881) worked in St. Petersburg until 1867, and in 1871 founded the company in Moscow. Khlebnikov’s Factory of diamond, gold and silver jewelry was well equipped with the latest technology for all kinds of work, its products were considered one of the best in Russia. The factory of Khlebnikov had a special art school, there were special workshops. Socioeconomic changes taking place in Russian life in the second half of XIX century could not but reflected the motifs of jewelry. There are stories on the theme of peasant life, which is displayed in a highly glamorized, and far from the truth. Made by small groups sculptures on the theme of peasant life, cast in silver, sometimes fortified on stone pedestals, served as ornaments for a desk or a table.
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Button ‘Cat trying to catch a lizard’. copper

Antique buttons art. Button for a long time served as a decorative ornament. Buttons were made ​​from precious metals, coral, amber, pearls. The shape, size, decoration and number of buttons on clothing informed about a person’s wealth and social status. Some garments were often more than a hundred buttons. Fur coat might be cheaper than the existing buttons on it. Historically, fashions in buttons have also reflected trends in applied aesthetics and the applied visual arts, with button-makers using techniques from jewellery making, ceramics, sculpture, painting, printmaking, metalworking, weaving and others.
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Cameo, 12th century; frame – the end of the 16th century. Agate, gold, pearls, precious stones

Antique gem carving art is known as Glyptics, and it is the art of carving on multicoloured or precious stones. Glyptic works are called engraved gems. The activity is called gem carving, and the artists – gem-cutters. References to antique gems, and intaglios in a jewellery context, will almost always mean carved gems. Gems with embedded images (intaglio), and with bas-relief images of convex (cameo) are distinguished. They were born of the classical art of antiquity, an art which poeticized and proclaimed as aesthetically pleasing all that was best and most worthy in the ideal of harmonious and perfect man. A craftsman could spend months and even years on the creation of a single cameo. E. Babelon, the French scholar of the early twentieth century and one of the most eminent connoisseurs of glyptics, remarked that it took as long to make a large cameo as to build a whole cathedral.
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