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Think of Elizabeth Taylor dripping in emeralds –
Wallis Simpson dazzling in fabulous Cartier designs
– HM The Queen resplendent in the Imperial State
Crown at the State Opening of Parliament …. jewels
have the power to adorn, impress and even heal.
The Romans believed that wearing an amethyst
protected against alcoholism, and the 11
th
century
Abbess Hildegard of Bingen believed that licking
a sapphire improved the intellect!
So for those of us who love jewellery & gemstones,
the news that in October 2013 the Museum of
London will display the entire Cheapside Hoard,
for the first time in 100 years, is a dream come true.
Why all the fuss about this new exhibition?
Let’s go back in time to early 17
th
century London.
In 1603 the Venetian Ambassador had been
presented to the 69-year old Elizabeth 1
st
and
commented ‘
Her low-necked gown showed her
throat encircled with pearls and rubies down to her
breast…she wore great pearls like pears around her
forehead….she had a vast quantity of gems and
pearls upon her person’
. Where would Londoners
go to buy jewellery to emulate the lustre of their
Queen? Cheapside, the principal market street of
London, was famous for its glittering shops: by
the end of the 16
th
century there were at least 55
premises selling gold and silver plate and jewels.
But as the next century dawned, some goldsmiths
moved to the Strand, Holborn and Fleet Street,
to be nearer to the Palace of Whitehall and the
great mansions of the wealthy along the river. In the
1620s the City complained that ‘
the former state and
lustre’
of Cheapside had been defaced and perfumers,
haberdashers, booksellers and others of ‘
mean trade’
had crept in to spoil the appearance of the street.
Now let’s go forward in time to 1912. The Inspector
of Acquisitions at the London Museum (then housed
in Lancaster House, St James) was an antiques dealer
named G.F. Gordon, nicknamed ‘Stoney Jack’ Since
the 1970s there has been a legal requirement for every
building site to be visited by a team of archaeologists
to ensure that no treasures are missed, but in Stoney’s
time no such restriction applied. So he turned himself
into a latter-day Fagin, cultivating the friendship of the
navvies on every building site in London. He bought
them beer, explained to them how to recognise valuable
objects which he would sell on to the Museum and
what the Museum didn’t want, he sold in his shop and
gave them a cut.
H.V. Morton in his seminal book ‘
In Search of London’
records
‘ I was with him one day when two navvies
handed over a heavy mass of clay found beneath a
building in Cheapside. It was like an iron football, and
they said there was a lot more of it. Sticking in the clay
were bright gleams of gold. When they had gone, we
went up to the bathroom and turned the water on to the
clay. Out fell pearl earrings and pendants and all kinds
of crumpled jewellery. That was how the famous hoard
of Tudor jewellery, the Cheapside Hoard, was
discovered.’
For this great find, now valued at many
millions of pounds, the navvies were given one hundred
pounds each and Stoney received one thousand pounds!
Gemstones & Jewellery: A Guide’s Eye View