gems, jewelry, ancient jewelry, archaeology, archaeogemolgy, art, history of jewelry, Mughal, Islam

Preserved in a book of jewellery sketches dating to the years between 1610 and 1625 and held in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum is the coloured presentation drawing of a jewelled aigrette designed by King James I’s (r. 1603–1625) favourite jeweller Arnold Lulls that betrays a fascination of the early modern English court with values of a distant world. The design, which is executed in pen, ink, wash, and gold on a sheet of vellum, is worked around a large square-cut ruby that is mounted in gold on an enamelled ground and set with several groups of faceted diamonds—their silver-painted representation having faded to black [Fig. 9.1]. Conspicuously framing the ruby from below is a group of table-cut, faceted diamonds that form a crescent that highlights the overall impression of a non-Western vocabulary of forms that frames a geometric pattern in an arabesque frame. Europeans began to associate the crescent with Muslim cultures in the time of the Crusades, which makes it seem unlikely that the symbol simply embodied a favourite design contemplated by one of the English court’s prime jewellers for reasons of personal taste. Rather, it seems to me, the jewel needs to be considered in the context of the English court’s recent contact with the Muslim world power of the Mughal Empire and its culture of jewelled superabundance.