The term Anubis Tut style — used informally in the trade and more broadly in auction cataloguing — denotes a specific wave of Egyptian Revival jewellery that erupted in the wake of Howard Carter's excavation of the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, beginning on 4 November 1922. Distinct from earlier Egyptian Revival movements of the Napoleonic era and the Victorian period, this post-1922 current was immediate, global, and commercially enormous. It drew directly on the visual vocabulary of the newly uncovered burial goods — the jackal-headed god Anubis, the winged scarab, the lotus blossom, the cartouche, the uraeus cobra, and hieroglyphic inscription — and translated those motifs into the prevailing aesthetic language of the day: the geometric rigour and chromatic boldness of Art Deco. The result was a body of jewellery that is among the most recognisable and collectible of the twentieth century, produced by the greatest maisons of Paris and London and imitated at every price point from the Rue de la Paix to the high street.

Historical Context: The Discovery and Its Immediate Impact

When Carter, working under the patronage of George Herbert, fifth Earl of Carnarvon, breached the sealed antechamber of KV62 and beheld what he famously described as "wonderful things," the world's press was already encamped outside. The Times of London had secured exclusive reporting rights, and within weeks the discovery had become a cultural phenomenon of extraordinary reach. Photographs of gilded shrines, alabaster canopic jars, and above all the golden death mask — published widely by early 1923 — provided designers with a precise and detailed visual lexicon that earlier Egyptian Revival movements had lacked. Eighteenth-century jewellers working in the Napoleonic mode had relied on travellers' sketches and the plates of the Description de l'Égypte; their successors in the 1920s had photographic documentation of extraordinary quality.

The timing was propitious. Art Deco, already well established in Parisian couture and decorative arts, was a style predisposed to absorb Egyptian influence: its preference for flat, geometric ornament, strong colour contrast, and symmetrical composition mapped naturally onto the conventions of ancient Egyptian art. The two idioms fused with remarkable ease, producing objects that read simultaneously as ancient and thoroughly modern.

A further impetus was the so-called "Curse of the Pharaohs" — the popular narrative, amplified by the death of Lord Carnarvon in April 1923, that the tomb carried a supernatural penalty for its violation. Far from dampening enthusiasm, this mythology intensified public fascination and gave Egyptian-themed jewellery an additional frisson of the exotic and the dangerous.

Iconography: The Principal Motifs

The visual programme of Anubis Tut style jewellery is drawn almost entirely from the funerary and religious imagery of ancient Egypt, filtered through the compositional preferences of 1920s and 1930s design.

• Anubis: The jackal-headed god of embalming and the dead, one of the most immediately recognisable figures from the tomb's contents, appears in profile in the characteristic Egyptian convention, often rendered in black enamel or carved onyx, sometimes in gold repoussé. His association with death and protection gave him a suitably dramatic character for jewellery of the period.
• The scarab: Khepri, the dung beetle as solar symbol and emblem of regeneration, was perhaps the single most commercially successful motif of the movement. Scarabs appear as brooches, pendants, ring bezels, and bracelet centrepieces, carved from lapis lazuli, turquoise, carnelian, faience, and occasionally from natural gemstones including carved emerald and sapphire in high-jewellery examples.
• The winged scarab: A composite motif combining the scarab with outstretched wings — frequently those of a vulture or falcon — that appears repeatedly among the actual burial goods. In jewellery it translates into wide, symmetrical brooches and pectoral ornaments of considerable scale.
• The lotus: Both the blue lotus (Nymphaea caerulea) and the white lotus (Nymphaea lotus) were sacred plants in ancient Egyptian iconography, associated with creation and the sun. In Tut-style jewellery the lotus appears as a stylised flower head, frequently in carved turquoise or enamel, and as a repeating border motif on bangles and necklaces.
• The uraeus: The rearing cobra, emblem of royal authority, appears as a terminal motif on bracelets and as a centrepiece for diadems and hair ornaments.
• Hieroglyphic inscription: Cartouche forms and hieroglyphic registers, sometimes phonetically meaningful and sometimes purely decorative, appear as enamel inlay, engraved gold, or carved hardstone elements.
• The Eye of Horus (wedjat): A protective amulet of ancient origin, rendered in enamel or carved stone and used as a pendant or brooch motif.
• Pharaonic figures: Seated or striding royal figures in profile, sometimes identified as Tutankhamun himself, appear in high-relief gold work and carved hardstone cameos.

Materials and Palette

The colour palette of Anubis Tut style jewellery is inseparable from the materials of ancient Egypt and from the chromatic ambitions of Art Deco. The canonical combination — deep blue lapis lazuli, vivid turquoise, warm carnelian, and burnished gold — derives directly from the burial goods themselves, which employed these materials in abundance. Jewellers of the 1920s replicated this palette with considerable fidelity.

• Lapis lazuli: Sourced principally from the Sar-e-Sang mines of Badakhshan, Afghanistan — the same geological source used by ancient Egyptian craftsmen — lapis provided the deep ultramarine ground colour essential to the style. It was used both as carved inlay and as cabochon or carved elements.
• Turquoise: Persian turquoise from the Nishapur region and, to a lesser extent, Egyptian Sinai turquoise, supplied the vivid blue-green accent colour. Turquoise was carved into scarabs, lotus flowers, and flat inlay panels.
• Carnelian: The warm orange-red of carnelian, a variety of chalcedony, provided the third primary colour of the palette and was used for carved scarabs, beads, and inlay.
• Gold: Yellow gold, often in relatively high karat, provided the ground metal, consistent with both the ancient originals and the Art Deco preference for warm metallic surfaces. Platinum, the preferred metal of much Art Deco jewellery, appears less frequently in Egyptian Revival pieces, where gold's chromatic warmth was considered more appropriate.
• Enamel: Polychrome enamel — particularly émail cloisonné and émail champlevé — was employed extensively to replicate the inlaid faience and coloured glass of the original burial goods. Black enamel was used for Anubis figures and hieroglyphic outlines; turquoise-blue and red enamel filled geometric registers.
• Faience and glass: Some jewellers incorporated actual ancient Egyptian faience beads and amulets into modern mounts, a practice that blurred the boundary between antiquarian collecting and contemporary jewellery design.
• Precious gemstones: In high-jewellery interpretations, emeralds (for their green, echoing the colour of vegetation and rebirth in Egyptian symbolism), sapphires, and rubies appear alongside the canonical hardstones, demonstrating the movement's assimilation into the broader Art Deco luxury market.

The Major Houses and Their Contributions

The Anubis Tut style was not a marginal curiosity but a central preoccupation of the leading Parisian jewellery maisons during the mid-1920s and into the 1930s.

Cartier was arguably the most prolific and technically accomplished producer of Egyptian Revival jewellery in this period. Louis Cartier had maintained a longstanding interest in non-Western decorative traditions, and the house had already incorporated Persian, Indian, and Chinese motifs into its work before 1922. The Tutankhamun discovery gave this orientalist tendency a new and commercially irresistible focus. Cartier produced vanity cases, brooches, bracelets, and necklaces incorporating carved lapis lazuli scarabs, hieroglyphic enamel panels, and winged motifs of considerable sophistication. The house also acquired and remounted ancient Egyptian hardstone carvings, setting genuine antiquities within modern platinum-and-gold mounts — a practice that raises complex questions of cultural heritage that were not widely debated at the time.

Van Cleef & Arpels produced Egyptian Revival pieces notable for their refined use of polychrome enamel and their integration of the style's iconography with the house's characteristic lightness of construction. The firm's serti invisible technique, though developed slightly later in the 1930s, reflects the same period's appetite for dense, saturated colour surfaces that Egyptian Revival work had helped to cultivate.

Boucheron and Mauboussin likewise contributed significant pieces, as did London houses including Garrard and a number of now-forgotten but historically important firms working in the Bond Street and Hatton Garden trades.

Below the haute joaillerie level, the style was interpreted by costume jewellery manufacturers — particularly in France, the United States, and Czechoslovakia (then a major centre of glass and paste jewellery production) — producing pieces in base metal, glass, and synthetic stones that brought the aesthetic to a mass market. These pieces, though outside the scope of high gemmological interest, document the extraordinary cultural reach of the Tutankhamun discovery.

Chronology and Decline

The peak of Anubis Tut style production falls between approximately 1923 and 1930. The initial frenzy of 1923–1925, driven by press coverage of the excavation's ongoing revelations, gave way to a more sustained but less frantic engagement through the later 1920s. By the early 1930s, the style was beginning to feel dated within the broader Art Deco context, as the movement's later phase shifted towards more abstract, streamlined forms. The Egyptian Revival element did not disappear entirely — isolated pieces continued to be produced — but it ceased to be a dominant current.

The movement's decline was also influenced by a growing, if still limited, awareness of the ethical dimensions of the antiquities trade. Egypt's Antiquities Service, under successive directors, was increasingly assertive about the export of ancient objects, and the casual incorporation of genuine ancient pieces into modern jewellery mounts became harder to sustain both legally and reputationally.

Collecting and the Auction Market

Anubis Tut style jewellery occupies a well-established position in the specialist auction market. Signed pieces by Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Boucheron command significant premiums, with major examples appearing regularly at Christie's, Sotheby's, and Bonhams in their dedicated Art Deco and Jewels sales. Unsigned but high-quality pieces — particularly those with exceptional enamelwork or fine carved hardstone elements — also attract serious collector interest.

Museum collections provide important reference points for the style. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London holds examples of Egyptian Revival jewellery from this period, as does the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. The Cartier Collection, maintained by the house itself, includes documented examples that have been exhibited and published extensively.

Collectors and dealers assess pieces in this category on several criteria: quality and condition of the enamelwork (which is vulnerable to chipping and loss), authenticity and condition of carved hardstone elements, provenance and documentation, maker's marks and signatures, and the coherence and ambition of the overall design. The presence of ancient Egyptian elements — genuine faience, carved hardstone amulets — adds archaeological interest but also raises due-diligence obligations under current cultural property law that did not apply at the time of manufacture.

Gemmological Notes

For the practising gemmologist, Anubis Tut style jewellery presents several points of interest beyond the historical. The lapis lazuli used in 1920s pieces is generally of high quality, consistent with the Badakhshan source, and typically shows the characteristic pyrite inclusions and calcite veining of natural material. Turquoise in these pieces may show evidence of early stabilisation treatments or wax impregnation, practices that were in use by the 1920s, though less systematically than today. Carnelian is generally natural, though heat treatment to intensify colour was practised in antiquity and continued in the modern period. Enamel colours should be assessed for consistency and originality; later restoration of damaged enamel is not uncommon in pieces that have been in circulation for a century.

The carved hardstone scarabs that appear in many pieces — whether lapis lazuli, turquoise, or carnelian — may in some cases be genuine ancient Egyptian objects remounted in modern settings. Distinguishing ancient from modern carving requires expertise in Egyptian lapidary technique and is beyond routine gemmological assessment; specialist Egyptological opinion is advisable when provenance is uncertain.

Further Reading

• GIA Gems & Gemology — Egyptian Revival Jewellery references
• Victoria and Albert Museum — Jewellery Collection