Roman Gold, Carnelian, Faience & Glass Necklace

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Roman Gold, Carnelian, Faience & Glass Necklace
CULTURE/REGION OF ORIGIN: Roman Empire
DATE: 1st-2nd Century CE
DIMENSIONS: 38.7 cm (15.1 in.) long.

DESCRIPTION: A necklace composed of re-strung Roman gold leaves, carnelian, faience and mosaic glass beads. The five gold leaves once belonged to a diadem and were hand cut and stamped from thin sheet gold in antiquity. They resemble olive or laurel leaves and range in length from 3.4 to 3.7 cm, with a naturalistic central rib and smaller veins radiating out diagonally. The glass beads include a blue, white and red mosaic eye bead, probably from Roman Egypt, a bi-conical bead in blue or black with a central white stripe, a single black glass bead, and two pale red glass beads with applied white trailing, imitating carnelian. Completing the arrangement are 4 carnelian beads and 17 faience beads in dark blue or black, white and shades of red. The ancient components are strung together with modern brass links, spacers, beads and clasps, in a style after the antique.

PROVENANCE: Formerly in a private New York family collection, acquired in Jerusalem in the 1960-70s.

PUBLISHED: Christies, ANCIENT JEWELRY, 9 December, 2008, New York.

COMPARISONS: Wolf Rudolph, A Golden Legacy: Ancient Jewelry from the Burton Y. Berry Collection at the Indiana University Art Museum, Bloomington, 1995, Cat. No 69D for a group of very similar leaves of the Roman imperial period. Also, K. Karageorghis, Excavations in the Necropolis of Salamis III, Nicosia, 1973, pl. 178, Nos. 1000, 1017-18, for examples from a pyre in Tumulus 77.

Item #CA-08-97

Price $1200.00