Making a Necklace

Somehow, I've been slowing drifting into jewelry making.  I made tree pendants as Christmas gifts and have dabbled with other things.  Then, Chris decided to try.  And discovered that it's fun and simple.

Unfortunately or maybe fortunately, it's addicting to find cool beads. We've been having fun finding historical portraits with jewelry examples.

One of my favorites has some interesting vase shaped beads. We were lucky enough to find some beads like this recently, and I finally got a chance to put something together.

The inspiration painting is in the MET, painted by by Andrea Solario from ca.1507-1509.



This is earlier than I usually research, but I really love those vase beads.  While enameled jewelry and long chains are common later in the century, there are examples that show beaded short necklaces with a pendant like we see here.

• 1567 English: Susan Bertie

•  16th Century Italian: Portrait of a Lady

I realized that I needed a pendant to complete the look and remembered the amazing laurel pendant I was gifted.  It was made by the amazing Lesley Wilson of Darkwood Armoury.  She only made a few... I'm not even sure how many.  I only know of one other.  It is based on a the Phoenix Jewel in the British Museum.



So, I set about stringing something up.  Here's the finished piece.  It was a lot of fun to make and took longer to research than to assemble.