← If Jewels Could Talk with Carol Woolton
If Jewels Could Talk with Carol Woolton
DECODING SCOTTISH RENAISSANCE JEWELS with Dr Anna Groundwater
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- [00:01]
Bumble Voice
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- [00:26]
Carole Houlton
This episode is brought to you by Fooli Gemstones.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
The Fettercomb jewel emerged in a sale in 2017, having come out of a house, and this is why it's called Fetterkind Jewel, Fettercomb House up in Aberdeenshire. It was found in the back of a drawer when they were clearly clearing out all the contents and they went, what's this? And there was this utterly exquisite piece sitting at the back.
- [00:58]
Carole Houlton
I'm Carole Houlton, the voice of jewellery. Welcome to if Jules Could Talk. I'm an author and broadcaster and the woman who initiated the role of jewellery editor at magazines like Tatler and Vogue. This is a podcast for everyone, for people who do like jewellery, for people who don't realize they like jewellery, and anyone intrigued by fascinating facts, new ideas and forgotten histories. So join me as I tell sparkly tales and meet all sorts of people delving into four centuries of jewellery culture and investigate what's happening now. I am delighted that Today I have Dr. Anna Groundwater with me who is the principal curator, Renaissance and Early Modern History at the National Museum Scotland. She's an expert in British and Scotland Scottish history. She's a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, on the editorial boards of the Antiquaries of Scotland and the Scottish Archives. I could go on and on. And we're talking about the new publication of the National Museums of Scotland, edited by Anna, called Decoding the Renaissance Jewelry in Scotland. And in particular, we're going to focus on the mysterious journey of a 16th century Renaissance jewelry which disappeared and reappeared fairly recently. We're going to try and unravel what might have happened in its history. So keep listening. Anna, thank you very much for joining us today.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
Well, thanks so much for having me.
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Carole Houlton
I wanted to talk firstly about the style of Scottish Renaissance jewels, who would have worn them, a little bit of the background of the time that produced them. So I guess there was a small number of people wealthy enough to own these type of jewels.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
The kind of people that would have worn or owned these jewels are obviously restricted to the elites. So that would have been the mercantile elites, the lairds and the nobles and of course, the royal court and the kings and queens of Scotland themselves. There's something else governing, though, who was wearing what. Not only did you have to have enough money to be able to buy these jewels, but there were also laws called sumptuary laws, which the latest one in this period was in 1581, which tried to control, to delineate who could wear what kind of clothing and what kind of jewellery with gold buttons and brooches and collars and so on, really reserved to the elite.
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Carole Houlton
And so what would they have been wearing? There were lockets, brooches, what in particular?
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
So men, we see them in wonderful portraits with castanets and collars of rich gold, worked gold, but with heavy stones in them as well. And hat pieces. The men did love a jewelled hat piece.
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Carole Houlton
So, like sort of badges or brooches.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
Yes. There's a really wonderful one called the Mirror of Great Britain, which James VI is portrayed as wearing in several portraits. And it's a combination of very large rubies and diamonds that are painted black in a sort of quatrefile style and mounted then on his hat.
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Carole Houlton
Very chic, very chic.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
He's very dashing. He's very fond of a tall hat with a large jewel in it.
- [04:26]
Carole Houlton
Well, you need. You need a tall hat. If you've got a large jewel, a tall black hat.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
And then for the women, they're literally covered in it. It's both jewelry that they wear, but also the jewels that have worked into their hair, worked into the border of a head covering, worked into the quilted clothing, into the borders on a sleeve and so on, so buttons. But also, if you think about those portraits of Elizabeth I, you know that the material of her Dr. Is sewn with pearls, is sewn with jewels. The very framing of the more removable jewels is in the clothing themselves. But then in terms of what they're actually wearing, they are wearing jewelled collars, they are wearing pearls and rubies hanging from their ears. Although earrings aren't as prevalent in the 16th century as they are to become. They're sort of less. Less important, really, in the whole bling of it. Collars that have rubies, emeralds, diamond, diamonds, twisted gold embellishments, knots of gold, bows of gold and roses and S's, S shaped links, either in the form of a serpent that maybe is enameled. They wear girdles, jeweled girdles, and then they have things hanging from those girdles of the belts and they're jeweled as well. And then, yes, finally, are the lockets, little jewelled lockets, sometimes framing a miniature portrait, sometimes framing a beautiful jewel like a big ruby or a big emerald, and covered in enamelled designs and maybe framed with pearls.
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Carole Houlton
Very heavy to take, to actually support that weight of fabric and weight of jewels.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
Yeah, no. So it would have actually constrained your movement, I think, the weight of all this and not wanting to dislodge it.
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Carole Houlton
Yes.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
So if you look at the inventories of jewels in this period, sometimes it. It is just literally a listing of the numbers of rubies, the numbers of pearls, the numbers of diamonds, whatever. Very good inventories exist for Mary, Queen of Scots jewellery taken at various points in her life, and you get a real sense of the sheer quantity that could be repurposed at any time. So, yes, sewn on clothing or made into a jewelled button to go down a bodice or into a locket.
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Carole Houlton
So they were wealthy, they were bejeweled. And what was the historical background around the sort of English Scottish relationship? What was happening at that moment?
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
We're talking about Renaissance jewels in Scotland in the 16th century, but really most of the examples that we have are really from the second half of the 16th century. And what's going on in Scotland at the time is Mary, Queen of Scots becomes queen as an infant queen, six days old in 1542. She is subsequently spirited off to France for her safety, where she marries the person, the Dauphin Francois, who finally becomes King of France in 1559. So she's queen of France as well as Queen of Scots, too, for a year before he dies in 1560. And in 1561, Mary comes back to Scotland. At the same time, in England, you've got Elizabeth I obviously, sitting on the throne, so you've got two strong women leading England and Scotland, but they're not necessarily particularly friendly. The historical relationship between England and Scotland is one that has been known as the old enmity, whereas Scotland's relationship with France at the beginning of this period was the old alliance. So the old friendship, as epitomized by Mary marrying the man that becomes the King of France. But what also is a context for Mary's reign is that in 1560, the Protestant Reformation of Scotland happens. Now, this is a religious revolution, away from Catholicism, away from the links with Rome and the Pope Pope towards Protestant networks within Europe, but also within Britain, and ultimately propels Scotland towards England, that it allows their friendship to develop because they are of the same reformed religion. So it's a religious revolution in terms of becoming Protestant, but it's also a political Rebellion, because it happens against the wishes of the Catholic queen, Mary Queen of Scots, and her mother, who was regent when it happens, Mary de Guise. So religious revolution, political rebellion, and something that's gone against the wishes of Mary Queen of Scots when she comes back into Scotland. And it is an uncomfortable position for her to return to. So that's the sort of political context of the time.
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Carole Houlton
So quite a lot of turmoil happening.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
A lot of turmoil. Mary wants to be Elizabeth's best friend. They are cousins, after all. And also, Mary has her own right to the succession of the Crown of England, which she's very keen to get Elizabeth to confirm. Elizabeth never does this.
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Carole Houlton
And in a way, I always think it's such a tragedy for Mary Queen of Scots that the King died, because I think her whole life would have been different, wouldn't it? Because she went on to such tragedy and such terrible relationships that destroyed her life.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
I think one of the things about Mary is, yes, it's an unknown noble, what would have happened. Because at the same time, you've got this Protestant revolution happening at home in Scotland. She would have had to deal with it at some point, France would have had to deal. A Catholic France would have had to deal with a Protestant Scotland at some point. But one of the things that I've been quite keen recently to get across is that, yes, we know Mary has this horrible ending, but actually there is that period in her life. Yes, personal sadness with the death of the Dauphin. But if we look at the kind of activity she's pursuing and the richness of her wardrobe and her jewellery box, I think we get something of the sense of magnificent Mary that we slightly lose when we look retrospectively back at her life, because we know she gets her head chopped off.
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Carole Houlton
So in a way, you're saying that when she returned to Scotland, she was quite instrumental in creating a bejeweled style and maybe encouraging artisans to make jewellery in the style of what had been going on in Europe.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
Yes. So I think that's another really important context for what's happening in Scotland, is that, yes, you've got the connection of Mary herself. She embodies these connections. But Scotland may have been on the geographical periphery of Europe, but it's very intimately connected into the circulation of design ideas, goods, jewels, people and then people coming to Scotland with skills, bringing in Renaissance ideas, bringing in Renaissance style goods. So Mary, returning from the continent, almost certainly brought these goldsmiths and silversmiths and jewellers in her wake. We know that the goldsmith records for Edinburgh in the 1560s show the emergence of people with foreign sounding surnames. So we are fairly certain that these are people coming either from France or from the Low Countries, from modern day Belgium and the Netherlands.
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Carole Houlton
So it was bad personally for Mary, but good for jewellery, that she retired.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
I think. So when she returned, she had five pretty good years and then it all went disastrously wrong.
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Carole Houlton
And so these artisans were doing really highly refined work.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
Yes. So I think there's been previously in the historiography of Britain, really an assumption that, you know, Scotland's something of a backwater, don't have the artisans, don't have those goldsmiths, the skills. But in fact, I think the evidence of what we have shows this connection into Europe and the presence of the skills to create jewels of the quality of the Pettican jewel. And also we have here in national museums, the Pennicoat jewels and a couple of other beautiful little enamelled lockets from around the same time. And they're real virtuoso pieces, could have been made in Ant's work, could have been made in Paris, could have been made in London. But we're fairly sure in the case of the Pennicoat jewels and the lockets at least, that they were made here in Edinburgh.
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Carole Houlton
So how can you detect that, that they were made in Edinburgh?
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
So there's two slightly different styles going on here. There's the Fetter jewel, which, if I can just describe it, very, very small, it's about 5cm with its hanger, it's a pendant loop, so the actual piece itself is probably less than 4 cm, very finely worked. It has a large stone on the front and on the back it has a very intricately enameled scene and emblems and images going on. That's one kind of enameled beautiful jewel. But we also have a number of lockets that frame similarly. They use enamel, but not in the same way. It's called openwork. It's like scrolls, metal scrolls filled in with beautiful enamel coloured enamel, and they frame little miniature portraits, painted portraits, and going around the edge of these lockets are river pearls, seed pearls, almost certainly from Scottish rivers. Now, the reason we think they're Scottish is they've been found. One of them was actually found in the ground in Scotland and they are distinctive to Scotland. We haven't really found them anywhere else. This particular style of jewelled locket framing a miniature portrait, we haven't really found them elsewhere in Europe. We found one other one in the Renaissance Museum in Paris in ecoimage, and it's very similar to ours. And I'm hoping to go and see it soon, because I wonder if it was made in Edinburgh too.
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Carole Houlton
And the Scottish pearls, I guess, are indicated.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
And the Scottish pearls, absolutely, yes.
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Carole Houlton
And so, I mean, given that these jewels sort of were made, fabricated and worn by elite individuals who have princely attributes, were there enough people in Scotland at the time of that status to wear these jewels?
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
Yeah. So it won't have been a massive industry, not in the way that Antwerp, for instance, or Bruges, a place like that would have been, but it was a significant industry and there was significant wealth in some parts of Scotland. So within, concentrated within those noble elites, and then some of the Edinburgh trading families were really quite wealthy too. And I think in the 16th century there's an expansion in trade and you've got people amassing considerable wealth. Nothing like the vast coffers that become available in England when James VI goes down to England in 1603. But there are a significant fewer but significantly wealthy people who would have been able to buy these, to commission them, to give them.
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Carole Houlton
Well, I guess there had to be, otherwise the artisans would not have grouped in Edinburgh because they wouldn't have had any work.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
What's also interesting coming over in Mary's wake is, yes, the jewellers, but also the portrait artists beginning to come over from the Low countries in the 1570s as well into the 1580s. That in itself, you're right, is it's evidence of there being people there, of being patrons there that can afford to use their services and people beginning to have their portraits painted. So in our book, we do those. We've got a wonderful chapter by Kate Anderson, who's the curator at the Portrait Gallery here in Edinburgh. It's got. We don't have a huge wealth of portraiture from this period, but what we have are some fantastic portraits of a few very elite women dripping in very fine jewellery.
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Carole Houlton
And where were the materials coming from that they were working with the stones? Well, we think they were river pearls from around Edinburgh. But where did the precious stones come from?
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
That's a lovely point, because I think the origins of the components tell us something about the very intricate lives of these jewels, that they don't just come together on the jeweler's bench, that the diamonds came all the way from India, the sapphires from Sri Lanka, the rubies from Burma, modern day Myanmar, and the emeralds were coming at that time from Colombia. And then thinking about the gold itself, we had in Scotland a mine in the 16th century at Crawford, Munich in Lanarkshire, so it was homegrown Scottish gold, not huge amounts, but enough to feed this growing industry in Edinburgh. And these goldsmiths weren't just making beautiful jewels, they were also making tableware and decorative objects. So in the museum, for instance, we have six masers made in Edinburgh in the mid 16th century, demonstrating all the same virtuosity that the jewels themselves show in terms of their engraving and the working of the gold and the silver.
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Carole Houlton
So they've come a long way. This is quite a sophisticated trade system going on for the goldsmiths.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
Yes. So I think it really shows just how connected they are into what's happening elsewhere in Europe, that they're tapping into something that is becoming a globalized trade. And in fact, of course, when the Spanish go to the Americas, then you get the huge. In the late 16th century, you've got huge amounts of Spanish gold coming back into Europe and that will have begun to replace Scottish. Yeah, exactly.
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Carole Houlton
Now, the reason your book is obviously called Decoding Scottish Renaissance Jewels is because you've alluded to the fact that the enamelling is in sort of highly decorative motifs. And what appears first as sort of a beautiful pattern on further investigation reveals quite complex hidden narratives. So what were they expressing with these jewels?
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
On the jewel? You had have a number of different ways a message is being communicated. So you've got the shape of the jewel itself. In the jewels that we've been talking about so far, these are fairly non commutative in that they're just ovals. But in some jewels you will have hearts, and in one jewel that I think we're going to come on to talk about, the Darnley jewel, there is the representation of a heart in that jewel. So you've got the shape of the jewel, you've got the components, the stones and the metals that go into it. The stones themselves have meanings. And then, yes, you have the imagery, and that imagery made it just purely decorative to start with. But in the case of, for instance, the Fetichan jewel, there is actually a complex picture emerging from them where every single bit of that image is communicating.
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Carole Houlton
Something, and that's communicating something about the wearer or the giver.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
So I think it could be both. It could say something about the nature, the character of the giver, something about what he's trying to or she is trying to achieve in gifting this particular object. But it could also say something about the attributes of the person that they're giving it to, the beauty, the steadfastness, the youthfulness, the virginal status of and so on. And it could be commemorating A particular moment.
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Carole Houlton
So there's a lot to be said.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
Yes, a lot to be said. And to get at the fullest of those meanings is, again, what else may be within the jewel. So to get the fullest meaning, you've got the shape, the decoration, the imagery, but also maybe what's inside, and maybe that's a little portrait, and that is another clue in the totality of the message of that jewel. But coming back to those enameled images that you are referring to, we have flora and fauna, birds, insects, we have landscape, we have architectural landscape. So we've got possibly churches, possibly little domestic buildings, a fence, and then you have classical figures. And in the case of the Vatican jewel, what we have is the figure of Mercury, the messenger, striding across the jewel from left to right, surrounded by all these different allegorical emblematic devices, flowers in particular, each flower saying something a little bit different.
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Carole Houlton
And so it appears enigmatic to us, but to anyone looking at that jewel, they would be able at that time, to decipher the message. And we've lost that art, do you think? We've lost that art of deciphering?
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
It remains a little bit enigmatic to us, but we can suggest what those meanings will have been. So, yes, in the 16th century, all of that will have been communicable and understood by the person giving and receiving.
- [22:06]
Carole Houlton
And anyone viewing it as well, and.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
Anyone viewing it, providing they are educated within those sort of languages. So it does assume a level of education. So, again, we're back to the elite that you would have, for instance, the classical learning to understand who the figure of Mercury was. So if you hadn't read about Mercury, you wouldn't know that he was a messenger, that he's also a conveyor of souls to the underworld, that he's renowned for eloquence, so perhaps to do with diplomacy. So you wouldn't get any of that if you hadn't read your classics or been told about them. But, yes, the educated elite would. So we can guess at their meanings and the meanings, particular meanings of stones and flowers have been recorded. People write about these things. And the jewelry historians of today do know those languages of flowers, the language of flowers and the language of stones and epidiary. But they're also multiple meanings to each of these types of things. So, you know, one stone can signify something, but it can also signify something completely different. A parrot can signify innocence and communication, but it's also rather exotic and a bit naughty and a bit playful. It can speak, so it can say lots of different things. So all of these different components, when you bring them all together, can be interpreted in different ways. And I think that's one of the intriguing things about trying to read, Trying to decode the messages in jewels like the Pettican jewel. And in our book we have two hugely expert jewellery historians, Geoffrey Mull, who I think is a friend of your program, Geoffrey was very instrumental in the whole journey, in fact, of the Petican jewel to National Museum Scotland, because he bid on our behalf for the jewel when it came up for auction. So we feel very intimately tied.
- [24:12]
Carole Houlton
How exciting. What an exciting thing to have done.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
Totally. Yeah. So he's been a massive supporter for us in that and it's been amazing to have him on board. So we have his understanding of what the jewel is saying, but we also have the jury historian Helen Wilde, who's a curator here of textiles as well at National Museum Scotland. And she has a bit of a different take. And I love that. I love that we have two chapters by very different people and they're juxtaposing their understandings of these jewels.
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Carole Houlton
And I thought also the Scottish element must come into it, because what I sort of knew before I read the book, that dogs, obviously we see them a lot in portraiture or jewels as sort of faithful animals looking adoringly at somebody. And you know that dogs use like that denote a faithful element of the person that the jewel is given to. But in Scottish politics, there's the idea of let sleeping dogs lie. And it could be a message about the turmoil that you were referring to earlier.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
Yes. So I think that's one of the points that Helen makes. Yes. Is this idea that dogs can be that call to peace, that in troubled political times this might well have fitted as a political message. And the wonderful thing about imagery like this is because it can be read in certain numbers of ways. If it's a secret message, if it's, say, a political message, it becomes hidden and it becomes difficult to prove that it's potentially something that a king or queen wouldn't want to be communicated.
- [25:59]
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- [26:23]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
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- [26:25]
Carole Houlton
Select styles plus a free professional measure. Rules and restrictions may apply. So it's a garnet, the stone on the opposite side to the enamel. What would be the specific meaning in this instance of the garnet's use?
- [26:38]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
So the garnet's an interesting one, partly because of its colour, red, and then the nature of the stone itself. So red is typically associated. Red stones, both rubies and garnets, associated with Christ's passion. So the drops of blood, but also the color and therefore the stones associated with expression of love, of passion, of desire. And then the very nature of the garnet. It comes from a family called Amandine. Amandine. Garnet is. It has a sort of translucence. It has a reflective quality which has been used over the centuries, for instance, in petrol crosses, where they frame religious relics. It's a stone that encourages sort of reflection, if you like. And there's also something quite tactile about it, something that you might want to touch.
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Carole Houlton
And then on the other side are these sort of. Can you describe an emblem for us as opposed to a sort of device to send a message? So I guess an emblem. How would you describe it?
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
Well, an emblem can be anything, whether it's a bird or a bee or a flower, and it just communicates particular qualities above and beyond its placing within a picture. You can have sort of more heroical devices and heraldic devices. They're also a kind of emblem, but that's not what we have on the Fetterchand jewel. On the Fetichan jewel, it's all down to the language of flowers and of the landscape and of the Mercury, the figure of Mercury, the little dog, the parrots, there's a dove.
- [28:32]
Carole Houlton
So they're representing a purpose or a direction of what somebody should think.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
Yeah. So for Geoffrey, the striding figure of Mercury represents a transitional moment in someone's life. Mercury is striding from left to right, and on the left is a vase of flowers, a huge vase of flowers that's a blue vase, also to do with love, and it's sprouting flowers, all different types. So there's gilliflowers, cornflowers, pansies, all of these symbolizing something slightly different. So we have Gilliflowers expressing love, but also fortitude. We have pansies, which are to do with. They come from the word pense, or in French or in Latin, pensore, which means to reflect or remember to think about. So positively meditative, possibly commemorative we have a thorny rose, so to do with passion and the fact that the path of love is not always smooth. And we also have red cornflowers, again, to do with passion. And Geoffrey, so he's very keen on the idea of the fertility, the abundance that is suggested by these flowers. And then the other thing that he says rather intriguingly, is that underneath, in between Mercury's legs, as he's striding along, is one single turquoise blue, Forget me not, which he says is to do with fertility and potentially, you know, it's the idea of the. The seed being dropped and something, procreation coming out of whatever this transitional moment is that's being represented in the jewels image. So for Geoffrey, he thinks that this transitional moment is possibly something like marriage, so moving from one state of virginity in love into marriage and then procreation.
- [30:34]
Carole Houlton
And fertility, so a strong message of fertility. And so in Helen, in contrast, she.
- [30:42]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
Suggests a number of meanings. She suggests something that is perhaps, yes, political, hoping for peace, that letting sleeping dogs lie, something to do with a diplomatic gift or message, to do with the parrots and the communication that Mercury suggests, something perhaps to do with the birth, because you've got the dove and the butterflies, so the butterflies, the symbol of, you know, emerging from a chrysalis and becoming something. So perhaps to do with birth or inheritance or conception. I wonder. I think that I was reading Helen's chapter again recently, and I sort of felt she was tending towards the more commemorative aspects.
- [31:32]
Carole Houlton
A sort of memorial.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
Yes, some kind of commemorative.
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Carole Houlton
But then Geoffrey suggested that the structure in the background could be a church or spire, which, again, he was thinking of marriage, whereas Helen thought it was an obelisk or monument to earthly glory. So therefore it was like an emblem of a life cut short.
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
Yes, exactly that. So we have two slightly opposing views, but each both of them equally valid.
- [32:03]
Carole Houlton
So what do you veer towards?
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Dr. Anna Groundwater
Well, I'm going to be diplomatic, but what I would say is that it's a very evocative piece and that love is hugely present in it. It does seem to be saying something very strongly about love and something about a relationship between two people. I think what the moment of that relationship is, it's not so clear, but there's clearly huge love in. And.
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Carole Houlton
And you mentioned the Darnley jewel earlier, because that's got incredibly complex enameled messaging going on, all sorts of things coming through there, and a complex message which you can tell us about. But I was particularly interested in, when we talked about flowers, the use of the sunflower in the Darnley Jewel, which again, is sprouting from two limbs in between. And will you tell us the background to that?
- [32:58]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
Yes. So there is this rather amazing jewel called the, alternatively the Darnley or the Lennox jewel, on display at Holyrood House, and it's an utterly astonishing jewel. The Fetter can jewel is restrained, I would say, in comparison, they're slightly different in size as well. The Fetter can is, as I say, it's about probably 4 centimeters, where the Darnley jewel is nearly 7 centimeters, so it's really quite substantially bigger. And it is encrusted in imagery. So on the front of it, it has four figures, the four figures of faith, hope, victory and truth, all brandishing various instruments in real 3D relief and highly coloured combination of enamels, but also of rubies and emeralds and a huge dark blue glass cabochon in the center of it. And on its reverse, it has this astonishing series of very emblematic figures, including a phoenix rising from the ashes, a salamander also surrounded by flames, a huge sun, and then at the bottom, as you say, this figure of a man reclining with a huge, massive, sprouting sunflower coming out of his loins. So clearly some kind of allusion to a progeny.
- [34:29]
Carole Houlton
And given that that was Lady Margaret Lennox, who heard about her, the mother of Lord Darnley, who was murdered, married to Mary, Queen of Scots. So the progeny was James VI of Scotland and the first of England. So this sunflower, do you feel is representative of his birth?
- [34:49]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
It's likely to be, if we accept the context of Margaret Lennox giving this or commissioning this jewel in commemoration of Darnley, her son and the Earl of Lennox, her husband, who was assassinated four years after Darnley was murdered. Yes. This would be a representation of James VI and first, who becomes King of England in 1603. And there's also the juxtaposition there, I think, also of the fenix on the top right of the jewel. And this is an image that we know that Elizabeth I herself uses, she's in paintings with as the phoenix, using this imagery of the phoenix signifying rebirth and renewal, a hope for the future. So one of the things that Deborah Clark, who is the person that writes about the Darnley jewel, who used to be the curator at Holyrood House, she suggests that this piece is potentially something that suggests the Margaret Lennox's hopes for the succession of her grandson, James VI to the English crown. Not something that Elizabeth would have been particularly happy to see, because Elizabeth didn't want to think about her death and what might happen after it, because she.
- [36:06]
Carole Houlton
Had no successor, she had no direct heir, she had no sunflower potential sprouting at any point. No sunflowers for Elizabeth and plenty of suitors trying, but. But she resisted. So the amazing thing is that these pieces survive and survive intact and so beautifully. But the survival of the Fetter can is kind of extraordinary, isn't it, because that was only discovered recently, wasn't it, in 2017? It had lain hidden somewhere. Can you tell us where it was hidden?
- [36:41]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
Yeah. So the Fetikan Jewel emerged in a sale in 2017, having come out of a house, and this is why it's called Fetter and Jewell Fetter House up in Aberdeenshire. It was found in the back of a drawer when they were clearly clearing out all the contents and they went, what's this? And there was this utterly exquisite piece sitting at the back of a drawer. And to be honest, I can tell you some things about where it came from, but I really can't tell you the whole story. So in the same way that we don't really know for sure what the imagery is telling us, we're not entirely sure of its journey. So there are two potential routes. It comes out of the collections of the Forbes of Pitsligo, who'd lived in the 19th century at Fettern House, and they had passed on through the Earls of Clinton, who married into the family later in the 19th century. But there's another route that they might have come through as well, which is from two families, the Belshies of Toft and the Stuarts of Buttermilk, both of which are southern counties in Scotland. So how they end up quite up north in Aberdeenshire, I can't exactly tell you. But there are these various lines, various routes in to a collection that finally ended up with the Forbes of Pitsligo and then in the house of the Earls of Clinton into the 20th century. We've been through the records, we've been through the archives of the Forbesborough Pits Ligo. There's no record of it anywhere in those. We've been through various wills and inventories, it's not there.
- [38:25]
Carole Houlton
Portraits, not shown in a portrait, not.
- [38:28]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
Shown in a portrait. So it's a little bit of a mystery. But that said, both the Belgies family and the Stuarts and the Clinton family, which is an English family originally, all were very prominent already within the 16th century. So they are the kind of people that could be commissioning luxurious jewellery or they could be buying it in from Someone else. So we're not entirely sure how it comes to be there. We continue to do archival research to try and track it back further and no doubt one day, hopefully we will find it. But there is one key bit of evidence missing apart from that. Archival evidence.
- [39:12]
Carole Houlton
Yes. This is the other great mystery of this jewel.
- [39:15]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
Yes. We don't have the image, we don't know who was on the miniature portrait that was once encased by the jewel that was once secreted inside the jewel. We know that one was there. There's a mount for it, there's the framing for it. Gold framing. That's obviously been forced.
- [39:36]
Carole Houlton
So that is a big clue. Somebody forced that portrait out because they didn't want to be reminded of whoever it was.
- [39:45]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
Yes. Or they wanted to replace that person with someone else.
- [39:48]
Carole Houlton
Yes. But the way it was forced, you know, I imagine that was done with force. You know, you think of jewels that are lost things. I mean, when love goes sour, you know, engagement rings are thrown. The Duke of Westminster gave Coco Chanel a ring thrown over the side of his yacht. You know, when love goes sour, people get cross and Jules can suffer. So I imagine that maybe it was a love affair that went wrong and someone ripped it out.
- [40:21]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
Well, that's a lovely interpretation. Let's keep that one. Yes, absolutely. So I haven't thought of it like that. So that's wonderful. A love affair gone wrong. Equally, it could be second wife, get the first one out.
- [40:36]
Carole Houlton
Oh, yes. Very jealous.
- [40:37]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
Jealous. It could be simply handing on the inheritance and maybe you're going to put someone new in. The other thing that I've speculated about is that it's politically uncomfortable whoever was in there. So if I wanted to be really fancy, which I shouldn't be, but I'm going to be, let's say it was for Mary, Queen of Scots, but she would not have been a good idea to have in a piece of jewellery. In the heights of the Protestant Reformation and following her execution, following her abdication, in fact, even from the Scottish throne in 1567. So if you were a determined Protestant, and maybe you felt strongly about this, maybe you didn't even like her, you know, if you were a Protestant, you didn't like Catholic Mary, maybe she was a dangerous image to own and I would think that would be the same into the 17th century when you have the wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Covenanting rebellions. If it had been a Catholic queen, this wouldn't have been a good thing to have. So maybe whoever was in there was.
- [41:46]
Carole Houlton
Politically dangerous and Also thinking that it was someone of a high status, like a royal person in the image means that if the family had known that there was a reason for it to be kept as something significant and precious all those years.
- [42:04]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
I think that's a really important point. I think the survival of jewelry like this is so rare. I mean, it was so rare that that's why they resorted in the 19th century to make, you know, making replicas and beautiful things, things, forgeries of Renaissance jewelry. It's so rare because the very components used to be broken down. They were valued for their, you know, their precious metals and their precious stones and fashions changed. So you just simply remade these things. But if they had a really important association that would keep them safe, that would preserve them, and that often an oral history goes with those jewels that survives down the century through the families that. In the case of the Fetter Kangel, unfortunately, that oral history has been lost.
- [42:55]
Carole Houlton
And nothing was written, as you say, in a will. No one bequeathed any instruction about it in written form.
- [43:03]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
Not that we found yet. You know, it's not to say that that isn't out there, that we will find that at some point.
- [43:09]
Carole Houlton
And it's very lucky it wasn't thrown away. If it's so tiny at the back of a drawer, somebody could have just swept it out.
- [43:15]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
Yeah. So easily lost.
- [43:17]
Carole Houlton
But you think it did go with that family. It wasn't in a piece of furniture, potentially, that the family bought at some point.
- [43:24]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
Oh, no, you're complicating it even more. Yes, you're completely right. It could be as random as that. Yes, absolutely.
- [43:33]
Carole Houlton
And they might not have known it was there.
- [43:35]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
No. So until we find a secure reference to it in an inventory or in a letter, we just simply are not going to know.
- [43:45]
Carole Houlton
And you know that it was made in Scotland originally.
- [43:48]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
There was some thought that it was, and we were perfectly happy with the idea that it could have been, because we know that we had jewellers like George Heriot, for instance, who subsequently went down to London and made jewels for Anna of Denmark and James I. So he's hanging around in Scotland at the right time. So we think the dates for the Fetterchand jewel are between 1575 and around 1600. And the reason for that is it's oval and that portrait lockets like this were generally round. The portraits were generally round up until around 1575, when Nicholas Hillier goes to France and they are all doing it in the oval in France, and he comes back and then they start painting these miniatures in ovals. So that gives us a suggestion of dating of post 1575. And then in terms of the style of the enamelling and these enameled emblematic images, these are replaced more or less, you know, slowly after 1600 with there's much more. If you look at some of the jewels of the later period of James 6 and 1, it's much more bling in terms of the jewels and jewels making emblems rather than this very fine enameling. So that gives us rough data of 1575-1600. We know that people like George Heriot are working in Edinburgh at that time. However, a comparison of the fetter can with the Darnley jewel at Holyrood House, which we've had them under the microscopes together and we've tested the golds and so on, suggests that these are things that wouldn't have been done in the same workshop but within because the actual quality of the workmanship is different. It's actually better on the fetter Kundal, it's finer. The etching, the engraving. And then the quality of the enamelling is much more subtle. On the Fetterchand jewel, it's also tiny. So, you know, you can just imagine the skill of someone being able to do this. And Lennox Darnley jewel, we are fairly sure was not made in Scotland. The reason being that Margaret Lennox herself never came north to Scotland after around 1552.
- [46:08]
Carole Houlton
She would have commissioned someone in London.
- [46:11]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
Yes, yeah, yeah. Much more likely that it was done in London.
- [46:14]
Carole Houlton
Now, also the date. Okay, so here's my. I'm gonna go with Jeffrey's love decoding. And I thought, well, if there's the luscious seeded fruits like pomegranate, which you know, donates fertility child. And I thought because it was sort of ripped out and I thought, well, if it, if it wasn't Mary, Queen of Scots, could it have been given as a gift to Elizabeth I by Lord Robert Dudley, her favorites long term suitor, believed by many to be her one true love. And when he married, remarried his second wife, Elizabeth was furious and banished him. I mean, do you think it was a secret love gift and when he married she ripped out his image, chucked the jewel away. Maybe she never appeared wearing it because she hid the secret love and that it could be a discarded love jewel of hers.
- [47:16]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
Carol, I'm going to have to rewrite the book.
- [47:20]
Carole Houlton
Of my romantic ideas notions getting carried away with me.
- [47:25]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
It's a lovely idea and it could eat. It could absolutely be the case because.
- [47:31]
Carole Houlton
I think he was banished about 1579. So that could, you know, it could have been, or maybe.
- [47:38]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
Or maybe it was the Earl of Essex in the 1590s. And then when he rebelled, led that rebellion. Maybe she ripped his image out.
- [47:48]
Carole Houlton
Yes, it could be. It could be. Maybe she just. Just changed whichever suitor was courting her, she changed the image.
- [47:56]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
It's a lovely idea and it's entirely possible.
- [48:00]
Carole Houlton
And how do you preserve the enamelling when it's on show? How do you preserve it?
- [48:07]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
Yeah. So we obviously have very tight environmental controls in our display cases, so they're hermetically sealed and monitored because we can't let something like metals particularly get. Get too moist, too humid. We have something called Prosol that goes into the cases and that absorbs the.
- [48:27]
Carole Houlton
Excess moisture so that these vibrant colours can last and last.
- [48:31]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
We occasionally might do, like, a surface clean, but we never do anything too. Too intrusive.
- [48:36]
Carole Houlton
And what happened when it was put up by this, the family for sale. You knew that you wanted it in the museum and so you entrust Geoffrey to go and bid. Do people know he's bidding on your behalf when he's at the sale?
- [48:51]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
No one would have known other than Geoffrey.
- [48:53]
Carole Houlton
Right.
- [48:53]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
And the auction house. The auction house would have known. But the vagaries of the sale are absolutely terrifying as a museum, because you have a finite amount of Money, you're not Mr. Rich Guy around the corner. And we have to bid for money. We need to get money from funders, which we did huge, hundreds of thousands from funders for this one because it was so important. But, yeah, you don't know you're going to get it at the end of the day. And we don't always get these things. And it's so important because then they go on public display and not into private collections.
- [49:25]
Carole Houlton
Yes. And not abroad when you want it, and not abroad, where the story is relevant to that place.
- [49:32]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
Absolutely. Yeah. Keep it local.
- [49:34]
Carole Houlton
So when you study these things and you're looking at them and writing about them, do you mourn the loss that we've lost? The sort of enigmatic messaging that goes into jewellery these days, the intricacy of.
- [49:47]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
That little dog or that little flower, the gilly flower or whatever it is? We have lost that kind of understanding. Most people have lost that kind of understanding today, but I think what still resonates is the emotion that people continue to invest. We still use jewellery for those significant moments, whether it's a marriage, a betrothal, a death, you know, a ring to celebrate the birth of a child. We still Invest our jewels today with the kinds of emotions that people were investing in 400 years ago. And the other thing that when I'm writing about these jewels and when I'm looking at them on display and writing, you know, interpretation labels and so on, is that emotion remains. And it's a very good connector. So it's a very good connector for people now to think about when they look at something like the fetter can jewel and go, that was a love token between two people in love in the 16th century. It gets them more into that place rather than just something that happened 400 years ago. It bridges the centuries and it's the emotion that does that.
- [50:58]
Carole Houlton
The human side of the stories.
- [50:59]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
Yes, exactly. Somewhere in the book I say this book is not just about jewels. It's about people as much as it is about pearls.
- [51:10]
Carole Houlton
And we want to know more about the people who made and owned that jewel and maybe wore it.
- [51:16]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
Yes.
- [51:17]
Carole Houlton
Now anyone can read your book decoding on the website of the publisher. Could you tell us the name of the website?
- [51:26]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
Yes. So it's Sidestone Press. It's a Dutch press and it's online. You just Google Sidestone and you can read it for free there and all the images and so on. It's almost as if you were reading the real thing. You can buy it off Amazon or through our own website, the National Museum's website.
- [51:45]
Carole Houlton
Well, we're going to put some images up so people can see what we've been talking about. And also I hope people will get hold of us on if jewels could talk and tell us their theories and where they think it might have been hiding all these years, this jewel and its possible journey and who might have been wearing it. It would be lovely to hear other people's views.
- [52:06]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
That would be amazing if we had other people's views or even, yeah, some knowledge.
- [52:11]
Carole Houlton
Would be incredible if anyone's seen anything similar out there or noticed something similar in a portrait, that would be amazing. So we can add to try and solve the mystery. On if Jules Could Talk.
- [52:24]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
Well, that would be amazing. Solve that cry.
- [52:27]
Carole Houlton
So thank you very much, Anna, for explaining it it and sharing your knowledge with us. Thank you.
- [52:33]
Dr. Anna Groundwater
Thank you so much, Carol. Very kind of you to have us.
- [52:40]
Carole Houlton
Thank you for listening. For this and other episodes of if Jules Could Talk, please go to our website carolwalton.com podcasts it's in the middle of being rebuilt, so bear with us. You'll have a very brand new or singing or dancing one coming up. Do share it any way you can. We love to have a rating and a comment and join me again in two weeks for the next jewelled nugget. I'm very excited. Usually I leave a little bit of mystery about who I'm talking to, but this week I'm not going to because I'm so thrilled to have David and Sybil Yurman on the podcast. They have joined me from New York. They basically together blurred the boundaries of art, craft and design and created a whole new kind of designer jewellery. They are both artists. David's a sculptor, Sybil is an artist. That's their passion. We often talk about jewellery being wearable art, but in their case it really is. And they're kind of the only people who've made a billion dollar business out of it as well. So do joint me then and hear both of them. It's very inspirational. And don't forget that the if Jules Could Talk book is out now. A lot's in it and they make very good Christmas gifts. So bear that in mind and join me again in two weeks. I'll see you then. Thank you. Bye. Bye. If Jules Could Talk with Carole Woolton is produced by Natasha Cowen. Music and editing by Tim Thornton. Graphics by Scott Bentley. Illustration by Jordi Labander. You can find our sponsors@ fullygemstones.com and me@carolwilton.com.