← If Jewels Could Talk with Carol Woolton
Loading summary
Transcript164 lines
- [00:01]
A
This episode is brought to you by Leibish, the Coloured diamond jewelry experts. Did you know that pink diamonds are amongst the rarest diamonds and over 90% came from the Argyll mine in Australia, which closed in 2020? I'm Carole Walton, the voice of jewellery, and I'm thrilled today to be bringing you an episode from the British Museum. You may hear a couple of bangs and crashes because there was some building work in the room next door to where we're recording, but I don't think you'll notice because the story you are about to hear is so fascinating. Welcome to if Jules Could Talk and we've got a really, really special episode for you. I think this is a global exclusive. Not just an exclusive, a global one. And I am delighted to be at the British Museum with, with Rachel King, the curator of Renaissance Europe and the Waddesdon bequest. And we're here to talk about, I think, quite possibly the most important Tudor jewel in the world, the Tudor heart. Rachel, thank you so much for hosting us.
- [01:16]
B
It's an absolute pleasure. Welcome to Britain European Prehistory at the British Museum.
- [01:21]
A
Well, we're thrilled to be here and we're going to do a deep dive into this extraordinary jewel and that you have been squirreled away in the British Museum for the last five years researching.
- [01:34]
B
This object was found on Friday 13th December 2019. And you're right, we've been researching it for many, many years. It was announced to the public in 2023, but now we're announcing a campaign to acquire the jewel for the public collections.
- [01:51]
A
So basically what is extraordinary about it is that it was found as fresh as the day it was made. Gold enamel and it's got a heart shaped pendant that you can see here with the initials H and K. And now that dates back to Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, which is extraordinary. There are no objects that exist from that time, are there, that are related to that couple?
- [02:16]
B
No, indeed. Henry VIII married Catherine of Aragon in 1509 and their marriage is annulled in 1533. And it's really that moment of annulment which leads to many objects being destroyed, which was, in a sense, an erasure of Catherine from history or a silencing of her history. Hence, when the finder dug this piece up from a field near to Birmingham, he himself didn't know what he was looking at. We can say that there is an H and K on the back and it has the Tudor rose and the pomegranate of Catherine of Aragon. And we can make that connection. But in fact, he thought he'd just found a great big piece of fairly recent costume jewelry.
- [02:58]
A
It's amazing. So what I want to do is talk about how he found it and the process of treasure and then how you find down the details and what gives you the clues about when it was made, where it was worn, who it might have been made for. So tell me about this lucky metal detectorist on the unlucky day of fire.
- [03:25]
B
Day the 13th, he was very, very lucky. And it was really just before Christmas as well, on a rather cold day. As I understand, metal detectorists in England have to follow a procedure, and that is that when metal detecting, you need permission from the landowner to be there. He had done that. And if you find something, according to the Treasure act of 1996, if you find something which you believe is older than 300 years and which constitutes more than 10% precious metal, this needs to be declared. And the declaration process means that you take it to a local fines liaison officer. There's one for each region in the uk, or rather England, better said, as Scotland actually has a separate policy.
- [04:12]
A
So people just Google that.
- [04:13]
B
Indeed, you can find that information online. But most people who are metal detectors, or many will be a member of a club. And this is something which is a common part of metal detecting, because a.
- [04:27]
A
Lot of people are going to go out metal detecting after this episode.
- [04:30]
B
Rather, some people describe buying a metal detector as buying a lottery ticket, as you never know what you're going to find. And in this case, the finder really struck lucky. You take it to your final officer and they make a proposal to the coroner as to whether it is treasure or not. And that's where the British Museum often comes into the picture, because the Fiennes liaison officer in this case, somebody called Theresa Gilmer, looked at this and said, oh, my goodness, everything about this looks quite old. And the motifs across it seem to suggest Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. But that's not enough. I could go to a really accomplished jeweler today and ask them to make an object of this type with those motifs across it. It would be brand new, it wouldn't be older than 300 years. So it came to the British Museum in the spring of 2020, and it was at that point that we began a more analytical program of researching the piece. Covid also came at the same moment.
- [05:33]
A
Because basically, as you say, it could be something more modern. So you look at it and think, okay, I treat this as if it's not old, but I prove it is. Is that the first, you could describe.
- [05:48]
B
It as that the Treasure act requires us to prove that it's more than 300 years old. So having never encountered something like this in my career and the majority of colleagues in this museum, never having encountered, we weren't quite sure how to proceed. So what we decided was, was to follow the guidance of the Treasure act, establish it's more than 300 years old and more than 10% precious metal as a way to get started, and then came at it more from the. Is it from Henry's own time, too?
- [06:22]
A
And the metal detectorist just found it, pulled it out of the earth. He had dredged a pond or something, was that right?
- [06:29]
B
Yes.
- [06:30]
A
And it was in the earth from the dredgings.
- [06:32]
B
Exactly. And metal detectors often detect on earth which has been recently disturbed, and so that's a common practice, and that's what he was doing. However, afterwards, we did commission an archaeological dig of where he'd found this. And there was nothing else commensurate with this. It was largely other farm detritus. So, unfortunately, we don't have an explanation right now for why the object was found where it was. But the same question might be, why shouldn't it be found?
- [07:05]
A
Yes. So if there was nothing else there, it suggests it's not a hoard. Somebody didn't bury it with other things to go back and intend to go and find it again.
- [07:17]
B
It could have been deposited in the ground with the intention of retrieving it. It could have been that it was wrapped in fabric, but that has degraded over time. There could have been some form of protection, maybe in wood or so on, so forth. Sadly, none of that evidence survives today.
- [07:35]
A
So when he found it, he did what most people would do, is clean it off.
- [07:39]
B
Exactly. He did. But actually, what we ask, and what the Treasure act requires, is that you don't clean an artifact because the surface may be delicate, and in this particular case, it's got lots of beautiful enamel on it. We want to retain as much as possible of the object. Therefore, if anything is ever found, please don't wash it or brush it.
- [08:02]
A
The earth would have told you something. You could have analyzed the earth that it had been buried in if it was still clinging to the piece.
- [08:10]
B
Yes. And there is some earth on this piece. And what we would often do in the museum context is look at the earth and to see whether that corresponds to where the find site is reported as having been made in. We always keep the find sites confidential. And it has been known, of course, that if a finder allows themselves to be filmed in the countryside, even far away from where their find was made, that people identify that site and head off and dig there too. So hence it's something we know about and which is in the record, but which we don't publicize.
- [08:49]
A
So you arrive one morning into the museum and you are presented with this. So what do you do? To start with, and I think you had a lot of obstacles on the way because Covid suddenly hit, didn't it?
- [09:00]
B
Indeed. So I didn't see this object for a very long time. In fact, I was told about it by telephone. And when I was. When I heard the description, I couldn't really put it together because it sounded like something I'd never seen before.
- [09:14]
A
Because you were having a baby.
- [09:15]
B
I was on maternity leave at the time and I was pushing the pram trying to get the baby to go to sleep, and I had to answer the telephone. And of course the baby is bawling and somebody's describing this to me, and I just.
- [09:30]
A
It was just the most important moment of your career.
- [09:32]
B
Overwhelming. In that particular moment, however, as you say, Covid struck and we were. We had the object in the museum, but we couldn't actually reach it, as most of us were furloughed that time, because the object seems, on the surface of it, too good to be true. The approach that we took was guilty before proven innocent. We have to look at this with a really healthy dose of skepticism and to always ensure. Although one has a gut feeling when you see something that you don't allow, as you become closer and closer to an object through working on it, that you don't allow yourself to forget that there could be issues with it. So in the museum, what we decided to do was to work first on what it's made of.
- [10:27]
A
So you look at the metal, establish what the metal is first.
- [10:30]
B
Indeed. So it looks like it's gold, but it doesn't mean that it's gold. It could be brass, which has been gilded, so given a gold coating, or it could be silver, which is given a gold coating. It was important to us to demonstrate that it's more than 10% precious metal. And therefore it was brought into the museum, where we've got analytical labs, and I'll use the correct scientific term here, they zapped it all over and then zapping it, or in identifying parts of the object they wanted to test, they were able to tell us what the.
- [11:00]
A
Alloy is from an X ray machine.
- [11:04]
B
From an XRF machine, which is also used for the enamels, too. The scientist Here was able to say this object is across the object, in nearly all cases just under 24 carats. So an exceptionally, exceptionally high purity or fineness of gold. And where it deviates, it's in places where there are little pins which are used and those have got a mechanical function. So the alloy had to be changed to make sure that they could withstand what their job was actually to be. Now, what we can't do in the museum is do anything that leads to an object's damage or destruction. So we can't cut into one of the links, for example, and see what the purity inside is. But it's very, very likely then that the purity is ever so slightly below the surface purity because of some of the chemical processes that typically take place. And the scientist was also able to say that the piece had been in the ground for some time because she could spot weathering across the object. Sadly, she can't see whether it's been in the ground for 40 years or 400 years. But nonetheless, this was a good sign that it hadn't been posited to be found. And she was also able to spot, particularly on some of the links of the chain, little impurities still sitting in the gold, which, if the chain or the heart had, the gold had been refined using a modern process, would have been stripped away. So that was a good enough evidence that the object, or at least the gold for the object, was probably obtained and refined before about 1860 when modern processes came in. That gave us some confidence heading in the right direction. And what's particularly nice about those little particles that she found in the gold, they relate to something called alluvial gold. So gold which comes from riverbeds. And if this object was to have been made in Henry VIII's time, you're probably looking at gold that has come from Africa into Europe. Now that's what we call today the Gold Coast. But at that time, it would have been panned and then collected and carried by camel caravan, perhaps via Timbuktu, maybe to Cairo or Alexandria, where really famous Florentine families or Genoese families for Florence, the Medici, for example, would have brought it by galley into Europe and then sold it to the major minting centers, for example, Paris. And the scientist in the museum was able to show that the purity of this object quite closely corresponds to the highest purity coins of the period. And at Henry's court, one of the things that Henry provides his goldsmiths with as their raw material are those high purity coins, often from France, in fact.
- [13:59]
A
Melting them down to have Jewelry made.
- [14:01]
B
Exactly. So they've already been made into one object and that object is then recycled or reused. And the reason they like coins is because the purity is guaranteed through Goldsmith's.
- [14:13]
A
Hall at the time, the Worshipful Company of Gold.
- [14:15]
B
Well, in this particular case, the coins are coming from Europe, so they're guaranteed in their place of manufacture. And this is one of the reasons why today we often use words across cultures which relate to, let's call it initial coin type. For example, the American word dollar comes from the coin type ataler, which is made in Joachim's Tal in Germany. And it's about a consistency of fineness that people were using them in the Netherlands, in Scandinavia, in England, because they knew they could rely on the purity. And their local coinage may not be like that. Their local coinage was more than likely to have, have been debased or something like this. So coins are probably very safe form of banking.
- [15:04]
A
Yes, as look at the gold price today.
- [15:07]
B
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So they're probably the source of the gold for this object.
- [15:14]
A
So that's all great because that's all heading towards Henry VIII's court.
- [15:18]
B
Lots of little anecdotes coming together there. And then another scientist in the museum looked at the enamels, which was this colourful decoration on the object, which all.
- [15:27]
A
Is mainly red, isn't it? Red and white.
- [15:29]
B
We've got some really lovely transparent red, an opaque white, a transparent ambery coloured enamel. And up here we've got the hand which has a beautiful crimson sleeve. And just beneath that we've got something which is white and speckled with black, probably intended to be fur or ermine, which was a particularly expensive fur in the period. And beneath that, the hand which has got a flesh color rendered in what we call mulberry, it's sort of purplish enamel. And those enamels can be tested and the scientists here, they can sort of draw down the contents of the enamels to tell you what the recipes included and the proportions of those ingredients. The problem being, however, that there is no database of comparative materials. So the British Museum had to undertake a full scale analysis of Tudor or 16th century pieces in the collection to give us a comparative database too. That shows you really the extent.
- [16:33]
A
So how many pieces would that involve?
- [16:36]
B
Well, in terms of very high quality Tudor pieces, we've got the biggest collection globally and it's about 30 items. It doesn't sound like a lot, but when you know that, for example, that there's only in the whole of the United States one piece from the period, then yes, it does show you something. The enamels were then determined, and the scientists here said, okay, well, actually, what I can say after all of that work is they are right, but I can't give you a date. Okay.
- [17:08]
A
She knows they're right because of how they were made and what's in them.
- [17:11]
B
They match what should be expected. But then the moment came where they analyzed the black enamel. And this was the most important moment for us, really, in the first chapter of researching this piece, because the black enamel has an impurity in it in the cobalt. And after about 1530, the impurity no longer is found because of a change in where people source their cobalt. This means that the black enamel is an index, and it shows us that the piece was made probably before 1530.
- [17:45]
A
Amazing.
- [17:46]
B
There's a caveat that would only be, for example, that if a goldsmith had a store or supply of that material that they were using up later on in the century. But by and large, we can take that as a sort of cut off. And we see that the object is before 1530. And that's beautiful because as a beginning to fit in. Yes. And the annulment of Henry and Catherine's marriage is 1533. He last sees Catherine in 1531.
- [18:15]
A
No, they're still married. They're still altogether at that time. So then you start looking at the motifs.
- [18:24]
B
Exactly that. So we had the confidence then to move forward. There was nothing on the object that we found that suggested it was made recently or in the 19th century, which would have been possible because there was an enormous revival of interest for the Tudor period then. And it's the motifs that start to get us to a closer date. We're looking at the front where there's the Tudor rose and the pomegranate. Those are entwining.
- [18:51]
A
And the pomegranate is Catherine of Aragon's branding. Essentially, it's her cipher. It's all over everything, over her clothes, her palaces, everything.
- [19:04]
B
You're absolutely right to say branding. It's a sort of visual shortcut to her name that everybody would have recognized. And it came with her from Granada, where her family come from. And the relationship is that the pomegranate sounds like the town Granada, but it also meant more to her because the pomegranate has lots of seats in it and is a symbol of fertility. And furthermore, it has this very, very, very red juice that some people also connected with Christ and his blood on the cross.
- [19:37]
A
And she was very. Her Catholicism was incredibly important to her at that time.
- [19:42]
B
There was no other religion. Catholicism and yes, but she was very, very, very devout. And it comes together in that motif, the three layers, the family connection to the region, the hopes that she had for her marriage first to Henry's brother, in fact, Prince Arthur. Arthur, that she would be fertile and give many heir. Well, at least. At least a male heir, but give many children and her devotion in one piece. And the Tudor rose. The story is a little less complex, but of course, most people might something about English history and the wars of the Roses, where you have the wars of the Roses between Lancashire and Yorkshire. Each has a different rose as their symbol. And when the peacetime comes, the two roses are superimposed, creating a new symbol of the Tudor dynasty. They grow together, often in symbolism relating to Catherine and Arthur and then Catherine and Henry. They grow together through. From two stalks. But what's unique on this piece is that they grow together from one stalk. And this is.
- [20:51]
A
It's almost like a tree of life, isn't it, with everything coming off it.
- [20:55]
B
Exactly that, or some. You could also see a biblical connection with the Tree of Jesse, which also is a. A family tree of sorts too. It grows up through the center and then spreads out. And this is something that you really start to see after they have their first heir. And that's a baby born in 1511. So that was a lovely feature that gave us something to think about. On the back we have an H and K and H's and K's, certainly around the time of Henry and Catherine would have been absolutely everywhere. But when their marriage ends, they begin to be removed. And where you see them today, it might be somewhere extremely high up in a church where people couldn't reach, or somewhere that's sort of hidden where they didn't think it was important to remove.
- [21:42]
A
To erase every memory of that.
- [21:45]
B
Exactly. But you might find H's and K's indeed relating to the later Catherine. And they look very different. That'd be a sleeker H and K in Roman capitals. The H and K on this object is curly and really intricate, and it's in a form that we call Lombardic lettering. So we knew that that's probably something you're going to find at the beginning of Henry's reign. And in fact, we found really good close examples which are on Henry's armor from 1515. Again, a date to start to work with. And then the final element to look that we started to look at was the hand clasp. Now, it's an absolutely amazing, intricate piece. And perhaps we'll come back to talk about the chain oh, yes, absolutely. But the hand clasp was identified as being the hand of God. Yeah, the hand of God often reaches down from a cloud, and that's what we've got here. But it has a very unusual form. It's a fist where the hand turned. And we identified this also in a source which is first published in 1516 and then later reissued in England in 1518. And it's a printer's device for the printer Johannes Froben, who's in Basel, and he is working for Thomas Moore, who's very, very important at Henry's court. And the first time this printer's device is used in European history is in Thomas Moore's Utopia. The motifs were wonderful and took several years to work through each of them, but it's not particularly good practice to see them all in isolation when in the end, they're not in isolation on the object. So we were looking for a source in which it told us that all of those motifs are present at one time, in one moment as well. And that came finally when we found a reference to a large embroidered piece of velvet, which was in the storerooms in Greenwich, beside the tilt yard or the jousting yard there. And this embroidered piece of velvet came from a horse's bard, which is a bit. A bit like a horse blanket. And it jousts in Henry's time. And perhaps you can imagine in your mind's eye, they're very sumptuous. Everybody's beautifully clothed, but horses are also beautifully dressed. They're like moving billboards, in a sense, to communicate what the king wants to communicate in that moment. And those horses bards had been made in 1518, and they were made for the engagement of Henry's daughter with the Dauphin of France. And the final piece of the heart that we haven't discussed yet is this motto on the front, Toujour, meaning always. And the hypothesis is then, that this piece was made to celebrate that engagement in October 1518. All of the motifs are known to have been present on the costumes worn at that engagement. And perhaps that toujour always is the link specifically to the intended marriage in the future of these two children of.
- [24:59]
A
Mary to the Dauphin of France.
- [25:01]
B
Then a new relationship for England. Henry as married Catherine, Spain. But now they're going to branch out and tie in with one of the other great dynasties. It's important because the Tudors themselves are actually a very recent dynasty in English history.
- [25:17]
A
And so Catherine actually was quite a Tudor catch for him.
- [25:21]
B
Absolutely. She was well above Henry's status. Her mother was A queen, and her father was a king, whereas Henry's father had only just arrived on the throne of England. Yes.
- [25:33]
A
So she was rather glamorous infanta who arrived over here, and he was quite lucky to have at that moment. And that again, that gets forgotten with Anne Boleyn, doesn't it, later on when she's abandoned for her lady in waiting.
- [25:48]
B
Yep. And she reigned when Henry wasn't able to reign, if he was traveling or on campaign, for example, she was more than his equal in status, but his equal as a couple. And it was the longest of all of his marriages in 24 years. It defined three decades of his rule. But if you added up all of the other marriages together, you wouldn't reach 24 years. It really was something.
- [26:13]
A
So we're really going into Catherine's best years, which have been eradicated since by historians and by artifacts being destroyed. So this is why this is so exceptional.
- [26:25]
B
One of the reasons exactly, that we have almost nothing in museums to tell Catherine's story today. And some of that is because her story was silenced after the annulment of the marriage. But some of that is also because in England, where Catholicism was essentially banned until 1829, there was no culture of being interested in that type of history. In fact, it was rather problematic history and curators of the 19th century were brought up in that way and therefore didn't collect objects like this. Catherine was an incredible queen, and she.
- [27:05]
A
Was the first female ambassador as well.
- [27:07]
B
And she shouldn't really be described as Henry's wife. She should be described as Queen Catherine at all times, and the first female ambassador, a great advocate of this. In fact, all of Henry's wives should be described as Henry's queens, and rather than made into his accessories in the way that we have tended to accept over time in history. And if the object does relate to the engagement of Mary and the French prince, then it allows us also to discuss Mary in a way that we can't in museums, known to most people who've studied English history as Bloody Mary also, particularly her later years, where she doubles down on her Catholicism. But this object relates to her when she's really a babe in arms, two years old and already being part. Made part of power politics. She clearly had no choice in whether she was being engaged to the dauphin. And when that engagement broke off a couple of years later, she was engaged to the emperor.
- [28:11]
A
She's a very useful pawn indeed.
- [28:13]
B
Yeah.
- [28:13]
A
And then, of course, was taken away from her mother and not allowed to see her mother. And you think of the upbringing that she had and then had to denounce her mother. And she wouldn't denounce that or her religion.
- [28:25]
B
Exactly. And in fact, the break with Rome also makes Mary illegitimate at a certain moment in her history, which is, I think, something that we would like to be able to discuss much more in the museum. We want to tell positive stories and negative stories, but we want to tell rounded stories. And up until now, we haven't had that. We have very few stories also that allow us to talk about children in these scenarios. And this would be one in particular. I mean, imagine being eight months old and having already had your first engagement party, I think.
- [29:00]
A
So let's talk about this engagement party. So which jousting tournament do you think this was made for?
- [29:08]
B
Well, we can pretty much say that it was made that the jousting tournament took place in October 1518. And as I say, the hypothesis is it's made for that. The tournament is made to celebrate the betrothal, which has just happened a couple of days before at St. Paul's Cathedral. And the betrothal is more than just simply that. It's actually a sort of cherry on the cake moment. Henry's really quite a young king at this time, so he's still only 28. He's not the Henry that we think.
- [29:42]
A
Big Henry, the Holbein Henry.
- [29:43]
B
Exactly. Not puffed up and he's svelte. He's hugely ambitious. He's attempting to demonstrate that not only that he's got the money to rival other European kings, but also that he's got the political sense to do this. And together with Cardinal Wolsey, he's made a proposal to other kings and princes in Europe that they should sign a sort of peace treatise that says there'll be no infighting here in Europe. And we need to be like this because there's a threat to us from the Ottoman Empire on the eastern fringe of Europe. They all come to London to sign this or they send their representatives. It's called the Treaty of Universal Peace. And it really is, as I say, a cherry on the cake or a bow on that treatise that the children are offered as a new dynastic alliance. And while everybody's in London, they can celebrate not only the treaty, but also the engagement with days of celebration at Greenwich Palace. And they take very little time to get all of this together. We can see when the first period payments start to be being made, and it really is just around June of that year. So somehow they managed to arrange an event which could have Been for up to 12,000 people. Incredible. According to what we know about jousts at Henry's court at that time. And they wouldn't have only just been 12,000 spectators, but those people from the court who were really providing the entertainment would have been provided with the garb that they were wearing. They were tended to be themed events where there was a master of ceremonies who worked out what you were to wear, what colours, what motifs, etc, etc. And for months, these couple of months, throughout the summer in advance, goldsmiths in London would have been fully booked, providing Henry. So some of the things that.
- [31:41]
A
Because they would have been hugely adorned.
- [31:43]
B
Exactly. Everybody. Everybody.
- [31:44]
A
Men and women.
- [31:46]
B
Everybody.
- [31:46]
A
And horses.
- [31:47]
B
Exactly. Everybody at the court wore gold. Somebody like Henry wore gold, as in chains, rings, brooches, in his cap, but even just on the. What we call eglets. But they're called lace tips. That's if you can imagine a modern hoodie or any modern sportswear that has a lace in it, that has a metal end today. In Henry's time, those existed and they were made of pure gold. He would have been absolutely dripping from tip to toe in gold. But even a liveried servant would have had gold on their body, perhaps in the form of gold thread, perhaps showing a cipher of Henry and Catherine. Everything would have been gilded. Wood would have been given glamour and shine with a gilded surface. And you would have eaten gold as well. It was added as an ingredient to.
- [32:37]
A
Food, really, so as a little decorative.
- [32:40]
B
Effect on the top, sometimes to gild Guildford, but also because it's believed to have health benefits. So sometimes you wouldn't see it necessarily.
- [32:48]
A
And I guess that's the ultimate in luxury, isn't it? And status?
- [32:52]
B
And it was. The word that they use in the period is magnificence. And that's something that you have and demonstrate and it requires you to spend a lot of money, but you're not allowed to do it in a splashy way. You need to really show that you know how to spend money judiciously. And although I think Henry spent money very generously. Very generously. But the point was that people respected how you spent money as well. So when it came to goldsmiths work, Henry provided often his courtiers with chains, for example, sometimes the goldsmiths get those chains back at the end of an.
- [33:35]
A
Event, so they're made for the event specifically, and then maybe come back to be remelted for the next event.
- [33:42]
B
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So this escaped, if that's the story behind this object. Yes. It probably should have been melted down at the end of the event. That's the first miracle. The second miracle is it survived the event and it wasn't melted down after the breaking of the engagement between Mary and the French dauphin, Francois. The third is that it survived Henry and Catherine's marriage being annulled. And the fourth, really, particularly when Catherine became vilified for her Catholicism, that it survived that too, because it would have been perhaps too hot to handle at that moment. And maybe that's why it's in the ground. Yes. We'll never know, but I think it's a fourfold miracle, if our hypothesis is correct.
- [34:33]
A
And so taking part in this jousting tournament, apart from its decorative magnificence, were they sometimes given as rewards for winners? Were they prizes as well, the jewels?
- [34:46]
B
It's very well documented that prizes were given for jais. Often they're presented by a female male member of the party. Could it be as high as the queen to the winner? Sometimes they're codified and sometimes not. We don't know what the prizes were at this 1518 joust. We know about some prizes from 1520, and we know also a lot more about towards the end of the century when the joust changes in dynamic to become more martial. We're talking at the moment in the 1510s, about jousting being a chivalric pursuit, about a gentleman operating in the structures of romance to impress women. And then the woman giving her grace or her love, symbolically, her devotion, symbolically. The piece, when you add it up, the weights of everything. So the. The chain is about 300 grams. It's just below what is the. A can of fizzy drink when full. And the pendant is about the weight of an egg.
- [35:51]
A
Haven't you got a fizzy drink?
- [35:52]
B
I've got a fizzy drink.
- [35:54]
A
I want to feel how heavy this is.
- [35:56]
B
If you were to imagine this suspended.
- [35:58]
A
Around you, you know you're wearing it, you would know.
- [36:01]
B
Yeah, absolutely. But not only would you know you're wearing it, everybody else would have known what it meant that you were wearing something like this, because there were very, very strict rules which codified in this period who could wear what. And that relates to the fineness of the metal, but also to the minimum weight that would be expected of you to wear for your status. And this adds up to about, in the contemporary measurements, about 11 ounces. And that was the minimum weight at 24 karat fineness to be worn by anybody who was of the status, the son of a baron or knight or above. Oh, that's for so you're putting it really in. Yeah, absolutely. In the top levels of nobility, we put this down. And that brings up the question, was, was it worn? Because it would appear to be quite small at the neck, perhaps not for a man, one would think. And this type of change size, or what you might call a choker today, corresponds with a female form called a carcane or carcanet. Those are recorded, though, for us today in male inventories. So it's difficult to know exactly for whom they are, but it's often said for women, maybe it wasn't made to be worn. If it's a prize, perhaps the very fact that it corresponds with this very specific weight is actually a way of giving sort of beautiful form of cash in an envelope. And maybe the intention is that you can take this object apart quite quickly, take off the enamel quite quickly, and you've got back to having the precious metal value, something that you could use.
- [37:55]
A
Did you say when it was found that one of the rivets was broken?
- [38:00]
B
Yes, there's evidence.
- [38:02]
A
So that would have been from the Tudor time.
- [38:05]
B
It would appear to be be the case that the way it was made was the way that the chain is made is riveted to the hand portion and you can see that somebody has been beneath the rivets with something sharp. It looks as if somebody has attempted to prise the rivets up and off.
- [38:24]
A
I see. I was about to have a theory that maybe a man tried it on and accidentally broke if it was too small for him.
- [38:32]
B
Well, it looks small, but it does measure about 16 inches.
- [38:35]
A
That's okay.
- [38:36]
B
That could be. It would be particularly tight, maybe for a very svelte neck. But in effect, this chain pattern, which is known as a curb chain, it's what we see on the bare skin today. But it comes from horse's tack, because it's the curb bit on the horse that is seen in many portraits of men too. So we're not entirely sure at the moment, really if this is a really wearable piece, but it corresponds to what was required of men to wear. And if you add up all of the gold in here, plus what we know about what workmanship cost, it comes to in the region of about £20 in the contemporary currency, and that would be half of the annual salary of somebody like the Master of the Mint, which would be the equivalent of our Chancellor of the Exchequer today. So it's still a substantially expensive piece and it certainly wouldn't have been affordable to anyone. It's more than likely that it was Made using Henry's money on Henry's craftspeople. But it doesn't mean that it was made by Henry for Catherine or Catherine for Henry.
- [39:55]
A
Right. But made for that joust for a nobleman.
- [39:59]
B
Made in that context. Yes, absolutely, in that context. And whether how it made its way to Birmingham or the site at which it was found does have a Tudor history that matches this period in particular. So we're not too worried about that at the moment.
- [40:16]
A
And so you've said there are signs that it was made quite quickly, that maybe the chains were made separately and as you say, for different jazz, then they might. At that moment, this was the most important message that Henry wanted people to have.
- [40:31]
B
Exactly.
- [40:32]
A
I love my wife, H and K. Love is not. We have this baby, she's engaged and haven't they just had another baby which all the hope of Britain.
- [40:43]
B
They had had two children, really, at this stage that had lived. The first one is born in 1511, a little boy who has. He's born at Christmas time, but unfortunately he has passed by the spring. And the Mary has then survived in 1518, she's two years old. And it has been suggested that not only do you have the Tudor rose and the pomegranate as fully fledged flowers, but just beneath you have two little buds. And it's been suggested that that could be those two children.
- [41:19]
A
These could be relating to their other children and therefore the hopeful signals that they will have this succession going beyond them. And at this point they have every reason to believe that is possible and happening.
- [41:35]
B
Exactly. And this is also one of the things, I think, which. Which means the piece is also more universally interesting than just for the Tudor period. I remember in discussion with you that you were talking about a piece that's today in the Victoria Ann Albert Museum, which references children. Perhaps you could say something.
- [41:52]
A
Prince Albert, who commissioned an orange blossom parure for Queen Victoria. And it came in several different pieces. And the wreath for the head hid four enamel oranges referencing their four eldest children. So there is historic.
- [42:14]
B
This is in a sense the OG version of that, then perhaps, if one wants to put it like that. So the object's really very dense in lots of different references. But a moment ago you asked me about whether it's been quickly made or not. And what we think in the museum is that the chain probably pre existed the heart. And the chain is beautifully, beautifully made. It's made from about 3 meters of gold wire. If that was. If you were to break each link and lay them end to end, and 3 meters of gold Wire is from the ground to the hoop of the base, the basketball hoop. And the craftsman has probably wound that wire around the dowel and then cut it with a saw and then had to solder the chain links together. In this case, the pattern is one link through four other links and that's what gives it this density and also allows it to lie flat, isn't it? It didn't allow lie flat when it was first made. The links are round and are simply connected and then the craftsperson has to fasten one end of the chain, perhaps in a vise, and then turn the chain with their own bodily weight or a winch, and they gradually deform the links to make a U shaped link and then those U's nestle in one another, creating this flat form. So it's in discussion with a goldsmith who's specialized in making this type of chain, Lysigletil. She said that she felt that she could make something of this type in about one day of this length. However, when you look in Tudor inventories, this is a very short length and people had meters and meters of chain like this. It would seem that because it's partitionable, people keep it in stock and then they cut it to the lengths that are needed. What would have happened probably is that people or goldsmiths had beautifully made chain in stock that they could, well, excuse the pun, draw upon then, and the rest might have been made as and when needed. Yeah. And the hand clasp has been made probably in a mould, so we would expect there to be more than one of those. And certainly there are other Tudor inventories that describe a fixing on a. A necklace which is a hand clasp. This one is beautifully made and if only we could show you the detail. But there are fingernails on every finger which would have been covered with the enamel. This is extremely high quality. The flesh coloured enamel of the hand has been damaged maybe from the pendant rocking against it in the ground, somehow or possibly through wear. But each of the fingers has a tiny fingernail there too. Amazing. And it must have been really for the craftsperson's own pleasure.
- [45:14]
A
So there was some detail. So he had time to do that.
- [45:18]
B
Yes, there would have been. This looks to be a very high quality. And the heart pendant shows lots of different techniques, but most of them quite rapidly done. And it has a front and back and the front and back are held together with what look like hinges to us today, but we refer to them as mechanical fixings. It really would have just held front and back together rather than having to solder all the way around, and it was X rayed and it has since been opened and it's been found to contain nothing. So it's probably not intended as a locket. And lots of other elements seem to be hastily done. This textured surface is probably there to create a visual effect rather than to support further enameling or anything like this. So, by and large, the heart is the most impressive to look at. It's not the bit that we all go ooh and ah over in the museum, it's the chain and it's the chain.
- [46:16]
A
For craftsmanship purposes, the chain is the glory, the hero.
- [46:21]
B
Exactly. And when you see this chain, then you're actually getting to hold something that you could only see in a painting. And this is the earliest chain of this type known to survive. It's the only type of this pattern at all surviving, because as a chain type, it has had quite a long history. So we do find them, particularly in silver, later on in the century. The chain has become, as you say, the hero for us in a way that we didn't expect when we first saw it. And we were all drawn to the heart. But that's also another reason why having this in the museum would be fantastic, because it opens so many doors to us, to history, a really pivotal moment in English history, but also into how craftspeople work. Something we can't often tell for gold because it gets melted down or fashions change, and jewelry in particular is updated or broken. Nowadays, this is like a time capsule. It hasn't had anything happen to it in almost 500 years.
- [47:26]
A
And the story it tells. Because we don't have any important jewels from Anne Boleyn.
- [47:33]
B
No, we don't.
- [47:34]
A
We can see it in a portrait at the National Portrait Gallery, her iconic bee. But actually, this is like the first wife speaking from beyond the grave, saying, hold on a second, let's rewrite, rewrite my history. I was number one. I was still the queen. I was legitimate wife and I was there for 24 years.
- [47:57]
B
Yeah. And we also don't know. And Amberlyn and the portraits is a really good thing to bring up, because we know that Hans Holbein the Younger arrived in England and we know what England looked like to some extent from the paintings that he produced. It's always said that he's a great innovator and he brought so much to the court. But in terms of jewellery, the British Museum has more than 100 designs for jewellery by Hans Holbein, but until now, we didn't actually know what he encountered when he came, we didn't know where he was innovating because we didn't know what existed. And so what we have here is also something that gives us an insight into a period which has just been a sort of blank for us, or something that you've had to imagine in your mind's eye because you read it in an inventory. But that's incredibly difficult given that there's nothing else. So it just seems to me to open a real door on the period and in the museum. Absolutely. Certainly it'll open doors onto many more questions. These are the ones that we've asked of the object to try to work out what it is when it was made. This is what we call in the museum the tombstone information. What it is when it was made, who made it, what it's made from. We've worked to clarify all of that information to allow the object to be valued. And the object has gone through a really rigorous valuation process, completely independent of the museum, which has arrived at the valuation of £3.5 million. What happens is a number of valuations come in. We can't just take one person's word for it. I say we. It's not done by the museum, but a whole series of valuations are brought together and are very specially appointed. Committee discussed those at length and it did take more than a year to get to the valuation of this object. 3.5 million sounds to some, obviously, a snip, but it doesn't mean that he.
- [50:01]
A
Was saying a snip in terms of jewellery and history and craftsmanship and putting the whole thing together.
- [50:09]
B
But it's exceptionally hard working piece, I think, very, very layered, dense in its history. It's so rare in a museum that we get an object that does so much holistically.
- [50:21]
A
And I think what's nice is you said to me that the metal detectorist had said, I want my son to learn about this jewel in class as a moment of history. And that is how important it is.
- [50:33]
B
The metal detectorist, he will receive what's known as a reward. It's not a payment, but it's a reward really, for having done the right thing and followed the procedures. He will receive half of the 3.5 million and the other half will be rewarded to the landowner. And yes, he can do that which he pleases with that money. But he's absolutely right in thinking that his child will learn about this at school. This is poised to become the next icon in the British Museum's collection. People may know about the Sutton Hoo helmet. They might know about the Lewis chess pieces, but we haven't a piece that does English history for the period after 1500. And this is probably it.
- [51:15]
A
And as you say, such a pivotal moment politically.
- [51:18]
B
Exactly.
- [51:20]
A
And everyone can contribute to this, and we hope everyone will, whether they're in England or abroad, and they might want to come to the museum on a trip and visit, so we can all chip in. And we can chip in if you go onto www.british museum.org. tudor Heart Appeal and whatever anybody would feel like gifting towards being able to come and look at this piece and have it as part of the iconic collection here absolutely would be amazing.
- [52:01]
B
And if it's preserved for the national collections, it's on permanent display, but it can also be studied, which will open so many new insights to us. I'm absolutely certain of it. The object absolutely belongs in the British Museum collection. And one of the nice things to draw out again is this motto, always, if it's in the British Museum collection, it will always be here for everybody. And one of the other elements that we haven't discussed yet again is this motto, which is a pun, or we believe it to be a pun. It says always toujour, but the toujour is split by a tiny little white cross, making it two words, in fact. And it seems to be a pun on the English pronunciation at the time of jour and yours, that they sound similar. So it means not only toujours always, but tous yours all yours. And that could be that the heart is always all yours. The heart will always be all yours in the British Museum.
- [53:15]
A
And French, of course, was the language of chivalric love.
- [53:20]
B
Indeed. And Henry wrote his love poetry, poetry in French. And he even used this form of toujour in his poems from the period.
- [53:27]
A
So, another link. So let's speculate how it got from that jousting tournament to this piece of earth in Warwickshire. So it could have been taken as a little memory of the joust. It could have been traveling to somebody's home, a nobleman's home in Warwickshire.
- [53:52]
B
I think there could be any number of explanations for why it entered the ground there. We don't have any evidence from the ground itself. There was an archaeological dig, but that didn't uncover anything. There's some evidence that the rivets on the chain were broken. It looks more like those were broken deliberately than they broke while someone was wearing it. And it dropped from their body.
- [54:17]
A
Highway Robin.
- [54:20]
B
Could it have been torn it from.
- [54:22]
A
Somebody'S neck and dropped it by accident in the dark?
- [54:27]
B
Could be. I mean, it could have been long grass and someone was galloping through it and it fell from them. Many treasure finds cannot be explained, at least for this period. For many earlier periods, you often having people making offerings and so to water. And that gives one context for this period. It can be very hard to say anything about why they enter the ground. I think I just simply use my imagination. But I tend not to share those imaginations too much because I can share them. Yeah. Well, what is what you've thought through?
- [55:02]
A
There's a big Tudor house in Warwickshire, Compton Winyards.
- [55:07]
B
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
- [55:08]
A
Who have H and K iconography in the bedroom above a stained glass window. And he stayed there a lot. It was his great friend. They did a lot of jousting together. Could Sir William Compton have been taking it up to Compton Winyatts?
- [55:27]
B
Well, the relationship where Henry is staying with William Compton is a bit later than this object may have been made. But I wouldn't be surprised if it's relates to a person of the stature as William Compton, who after 1521, was incredibly important, more important than before at Henry's court and of course, is a major landowner in that area.
- [55:53]
A
And even if he hadn't stayed there, he could have been taking this there. And then, because he was such a close friend, he was involved in making all the tristes with the women who came in Catherine's marriage. There were several in that marriage. So like Mary Boleyn, he would have made the triss with. And maybe if he had kept that jewel when he knew Henry was trying to disentangle him from Catherine, he would not have wanted that at Compton Winyard.
- [56:24]
B
Yeah. If I remember correctly, also, Compton keeps Henry's jewels for him at some point in this period. So. So there is certainly a list of jewels which is stated to be in the hands of William Compton. And if I recall correctly, there are also hearts within that too. However, it may not. I mean, one of the things that's a huge surprise for us really in this object, having started with zero, is how far we got. And there are many moments where I've had to say, say to myself, you need to draw back, you need to pull back. Because if you stitch it up too tightly, you'll convince yourself. And you need to make sure that others are convinced by what you're saying.
- [57:09]
A
And so other theories can come in any time.
- [57:13]
B
Other theories may apply when it comes to this too. But another way, it could be that the object became too hot to handle after. Well, this is partially what you've said.
- [57:27]
A
You wouldn't have wanted it. And actually they only found it because they dredged a pond, and if you wanted to get rid of something that you really wanted no trace of, you would throw it into water where it would sink.
- [57:42]
B
Yeah. And there are examples in the 19th century of what were thought to be Tudor trains that were dredged from ponds, but as they don't survive anymore, we don't know anything about them. It could also be a much later story. The region is very, very badly affected by the Civil English Civil War in the next century. And that's another reason why we find things in the ground very, very frequently. People are burying things to return to and they don't return. Perhaps they've died. So we couldn't ascertain at what point it went into the ground. And it would be marvelous if we could. But if it were made in 1518 or brought together better in 1518 for the joust, as I'm suggesting, it was found in December 2019, which is 501 years. It's a really lovely sort of facet of its story as well. And whether it was in the ground for all of those 501 years or 250, I think it's very unlikely that we'll know in the short term. But once again, if it's in the museum, I've got no doubt that it's going to cause a lot of attention to be brought to it. And somebody, perhaps not me, will find something in the archive that gets us.
- [59:06]
A
Further, gets the scholarship a bit further down the line. But certainly it's the most fascinating story. And, Rachel, congratulations for all your hard academic work to uncover what you have.
- [59:21]
B
Oh, thank you. I mean, I'm standing here as one person, but please imagine about 100 people behind me, behind me, both within the museum, but specialists in England and abroad who consulted on this piece. It's the tip of the iceberg having me here today, and it's an opportunity to say thank you to all of them as well.
- [59:44]
A
Yes. But you do tell the story beautifully and you have made this dual talk.
- [59:49]
B
Oh, thank you very much.
- [59:50]
A
After 501 years, you've given it its voice.
- [59:54]
B
I've done lots of talking to this jewel as well and asked it many questions, and I've got no doubt that when I see it on display in the museum, that there'll be a. A tear or two, because I've had such unfettered access to it. I can see it every day.
- [60:11]
A
Now. You're giving it over to the world.
- [60:12]
B
And now it's for the public to enjoy as well. But it's become a friend. And as you said, I had just had a baby when it was born, and I'm sure there's been some neglect of that child in the last couple of years where love has gone towards this object too. But I recalled just yesterday night, in fact, that when I had my interview for the British Museum, among the objects that I was tested on, I was tested on a 19th century fake with the initials H and K. And I couldn't. How extraordinary, believe it yesterday when it came to mind that I'd forgotten that and how that somehow presaged this moment that the first big project of my job at the British Museum would be this piece. And I think there'll never be another like it. This is probably the project of my career.
- [61:09]
A
Well, what a project. It's fantastic. And thank you so much for sharing it with us and allowing us this preview of this extraordinary story.
- [61:20]
B
Thank you.
- [61:20]
A
And here it is at the museum. So I urge any of you who could get here to come and view it. Or you can see it online, you can see it on ifjuils Could Talk, andarolwalton on Instagram and if you can contribute, it's just fantastic for the if Jules Could Talk community, if we can all contribute towards this so we can view it in the future.
- [61:49]
B
Thank you very much.
- [61:50]
A
Thanks, Rachel. Thank you for listening. For this and other episodes of if Jules Could Talk, please go to our website carolwilton.com share it anywhere you can. We love to have a rating and a comment. You can find us arilwilton on Instagram and on YouTube as well where you can find view this podcast. And don't forget the book of the podcast if Jules Could Talk is out now. To find out more about our sponsors, they're@www.leibish.com. join me again soon when we are going to fast forward in history and we are going to the Court of Versailles where we're going to have a completely fascinating look at the affair of the diamond necklace, the necklace that precipitated the fall of the French monarchy. Join me then. See you soon. And in the meantime, thank you so much for listening. Bye bye. If Jules Could Talk with Carol Woolton is produced by Natasha Cowan. Music and editing by Tim Thornton. Graphics by Scott Bentley Illustration by Jordi Labander.
- [63:08]
B
Sam.