I love how irregular the gems often are on this era of European royal loot. They’re usually free form cabochons, very rarely faceted, only roughly matched as to size, shape, and color for sets that are supposed to be symmetric, and so on. And, when you get into actually identifying the stones, you often find weird things, like a cool bit of colored glass tucked in among sapphires, miscellaneous garnets and spinels, and all sorts of oddball shiny pebbles. It’s like as long as it was brightly colored, mostly transparent, and harder than a dirt clod it was considered a “gem”, and the main design principle was “more is better”. It’s a very crow-like “I like to hoard shiny things” aesthetic, which, honestly, I can relate to. Who doesn’t like hoarding shiny things like a crow?
It makes sense. Our earliest uses of gold and silver weren't mined, but likely found in rivers and exposures, and cold hammered into items long before smelting was figured out.
Human see shiny, human like. Over thousands of years, we got better and better about making sort-of shiny into super-shiny
I love how irregular the gems often are on this era of European royal loot. They’re usually free form cabochons, very rarely faceted, only roughly matched as to size, shape, and color for sets that are supposed to be symmetric, and so on. And, when you get into actually identifying the stones, you often find weird things, like a cool bit of colored glass tucked in among sapphires, miscellaneous garnets and spinels, and all sorts of oddball shiny pebbles. It’s like as long as it was brightly colored, mostly transparent, and harder than a dirt clod it was considered a “gem”, and the main design principle was “more is better”. It’s a very crow-like “I like to hoard shiny things” aesthetic, which, honestly, I can relate to. Who doesn’t like hoarding shiny things like a crow?
Love this, these crowns do represent the time period well
It makes sense. Our earliest uses of gold and silver weren't mined, but likely found in rivers and exposures, and cold hammered into items long before smelting was figured out.
Human see shiny, human like. Over thousands of years, we got better and better about making sort-of shiny into super-shiny
Do you have a link?
Resident Evil 4 treasure
Its in the Munich residence right?
And what is this item?