YOJ10-13 Ancient Whispers Earrings
Sterling silver
Constructed, cold-joined
L 4.3 cm x W 1.3 cm
It’s been another productive week here in the studio, with two new ring designs (destined for tutorials), some bridal jewelry and this pair of earrings made.
The earrings are the product of some work I’ve been doing on a proposal for a one-day course. The idea is to teach ancient techniques. This pattern is assumed to be ancient Egyptian. It was all but lost to time before being reintroduced in the 1840s by the House of Castellani.  The Castellanis were greatly influenced by jewelry found in excavations of ancient Etruscan sites. As fervent nationalists, they studied the pieces coming out of the sites, and painstakingly reproduced the jewelry, in what became known as the Italian Archeological Style. The Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia in Rome has in its collection a “Prehistoric” bracelet, manufactured by Castellani, which today’s wire artists would recognize as a variant of the Egyptian scroll.
The Etruscans had trading relationships with the Syrians, Phoenicians and Greeks, who all traded with the Egyptians, so it’s conceivable that the design traveled from the Nile Basin to Ancient Italy.
