- Museum number
- 2011,8009.1
- Description
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Gold bracelet with central roundel, decorated all round with an openwork interlace design copying Viking ornaments of the 9th-10th century with granulation and wirework. Contained in the original retailer’s morocco leather case lined in red velvet and silk, and printed in gold inside the lid:
TO H.R.H. THE PRINCESS OF WALES • F.AHRENDS & Co. 165 PICCADILLY. LONDON. W. • DANISH GALLERY
The bracelet itself is stamped 15C (15 carat) with the Prince of Wales’s feathers, indicating the retailer’s royal patronage.
- Production date
- 1870 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 4.50 centimetres (roundel)
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Width: 6 centimetres (bracelet hoop)
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- The copying of spectacular finds of ancient gold work played a critical part Denmark’s creation of a new national identity from the 1860s onwards, a process in which contemporary jewellery was used to demonstrate the greatness of Denmark’s past.
This bracelet is based on Viking disc-brooches in the so-called ‘Borre’ style. Examples of similar design were found in Denmark in the late 1850s as part of Viking hoards such as those from Vester Vedsted and Sejrø. The closest models are those from Sejrø; they are silver and have the same design as the bracelet centrepiece, with interlace scrolls, arrowhead motifs and a central cross, but are generally flatter with a solid base plate (see H. Eilbracht, 'Filigran- und granulationskunst im Wikingischen Norden', Cologne 1999, nos. 187-9). The bracelet has adapted the motif as a domed, openwork shape, repeating elements from it to make the decoration round the back of the bracelet hoop. Typically for a 19th-century copy, the interlace scroll has been misunderstood: it is interrupted to form a secondary cross motif, when it should in fact be continuous.
The bracelet is an ingenious adaption of a flat disc-shaped Viking ornament to form a bracelet in the round. This is a key feature of revivalist jewellery and one that figured prominently in contemporary discourse on the nature of using the past as a model. Those jewellers who had adapted original designs to a modern idiom rather than simply copying them, were held in higher regard.
Although the bracelet bears no maker's mark it has been tentatively attributed to the Copenhagen firm of V. Christesen, well known for their revivalist jewellery in the 'Old Norse' style, on the basis of an identical brooch and bracelet in Christesen’s publicity catalogue for the Paris International Exhibition of 1889 where the same misunderstanding of the interlace scroll occurs (the Christesen catalogue is in the Kunstindustriemuseet Bibliothek, see C. Gere and J. Rudoe, 'Jewellery in the Age of Queen Victoria, London 2010, p. 443, fig. 441).
Danish revival jewels were first shown in Britain at the 1862 International Exhibition in London, but the marriage of the Danish Princess Alexandra to the Prince of Wales in 1863 provided a political occasion to tell Denmark’s history through its jewellery. The Princess was given no fewer than five different sets of revivalist or ‘Old Norse’ jewellery representing the great ages in Denmark’s past: Bronze Age, Iron Age and Viking period. In each case, an original ornament, which might be a diadem, bracelet or necklace, was adapted to create a whole set in the Victorian taste. The Princess’s gifts, displayed to huge crowds at the South Kensington Museum and widely illustrated in the press, gave them popular appeal in Britain as well as Denmark. These Danish revival jewels were popular in Britain thanks to the patronage of Princess Alexandra who ensured that Danish art objects were available in London. The Princess’s own popularity added to the interest in Denmark, and to the enormous sympathy with Denmark when Schleswig-Holstein was finally lost to Germany in 1864.
The retailer F. Ahrends is new name not previously recorded in the literature on 19th-century jewellery. The principal retailer of Danish goods in London, under the patronage of the Princess of Wales, was A. Borgen & Company, in New Bond Street from 1869-79 (see 1978,1002.1055; 1986,0607.1; 1991,0105.1 for other jewels retailed by Borgen). F. Ahrends must have set up as a rival establishment in Piccadilly. According to an advertisement in The Times, in December 1875 (the only mention of him in the Times digital archive), he had on sale a 7-carat diamond that had belonged to Thorwaldsen, as well as ‘the late King of Denmark’s private cabinet of rare antique engraved stones (intaglio), and also a very fine collection of Jewellery of unique designs and excellent workmanship.’ He is almost certainly the same 'Ahrends' (recorded without an initial) from whom the Museum purchased a collection of Danish prehistoric antiquities in 1874 (1874,0313.1-68). Other Danish antiquities that entered the Museum via the Christy collection had also previously belonged to 'Ahrends' (Den.186a etc, and OA 6651). For another retailer's case with his name, containing a Venetian silver filigree brooch and labelled 'To HRH The Princess of Wales / F. Ahrends & Co / 165 Piccadilly / London W. / Danish Gallery ', housed at Coughton Court, Warwickshire, National Trust, see http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/135773.4 (accessed 31/3/2013).
For a full account of Danish revival jewellery see C. Gere and J. Rudoe, Jewellery in the Age of Queen Victoria, London 2010, chapter 8, pp. 437-43.
See also J. Rudoe 'Old Norse', British Museum Magazine, Winter 2011, p. 11.
- Location
- On display (G47/dc11)
- Condition
- slight scuffing to case
- Acquisition date
- 2011
- Department
- Britain, Europe and Prehistory
- Registration number
- 2011,8009.1
- Additional IDs
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Miscellaneous number: MN