The name Giuliano stands as one of the most distinguished in the history of nineteenth-century jewellery. Carlo Giuliano (c.1831–1895), a Neapolitan goldsmith who settled in London during the 1860s, and subsequently his sons Carlo Joseph (1863–1912) and Arthur Alphonse (1864–1914), produced work of such archaeological fidelity and technical refinement that their pieces are today held in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum, and major private collections worldwide. Their output — centred on Renaissance Revival and archaeological-revival styles, executed in polychrome enamel, granulation, and delicate wirework — represents the highest achievement of historicist jewellery in the Victorian era, and commands serious attention at auction and among specialist collectors of nineteenth-century decorative arts.

Origins and the London Establishment

Carlo Giuliano was born in Naples around 1831, at a moment when that city was the epicentre of a Europe-wide fascination with classical antiquity. The excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum had been proceeding for over a century, and the discovery of intact Etruscan tombs at Vulci (1828) and Cerveteri had flooded museums and private collections with ancient goldwork of extraordinary fineness. Neapolitan goldsmiths were uniquely positioned to study these originals at close quarters, and the city's workshops — particularly those associated with the antiquarian dealer and jeweller Fortunato Pio Castellani — became laboratories for the recovery of ancient techniques.

It was almost certainly through the Castellani connection that Giuliano received his formation. The Castellani family, based in Rome and Naples, had been attempting since the 1820s to rediscover the lost Etruscan technique of granulation — the adhesion of minute gold spheres to a gold ground without visible solder — and their archaeological-revival jewellery had attracted international acclaim. Giuliano absorbed these ambitions thoroughly. By the early 1860s he had relocated to London, where he initially worked as a supplier and agent for the Castellani firm, operating from premises in Frith Street, Soho, before establishing his own independent workshop.

His move to London was well timed. The city's jewellery trade was concentrated in the Hatton Garden and Bond Street districts, and a sophisticated clientele — aristocratic, literary, and aesthetically adventurous — was growing restless with the mass-produced, heavily set jewellery that dominated the mid-Victorian market. Giuliano found his patrons among collectors and aesthetes who valued handcraft, historical learning, and the quiet authority of ancient forms over the ostentation of large stones in elaborate settings. His shop eventually moved to 115 Piccadilly, an address that placed him squarely among London's premier luxury retailers.

Style and Technique

The defining characteristic of Giuliano's work is the seamless integration of several demanding goldsmithing techniques, deployed in the service of a coherent historical vision. His pieces draw simultaneously on Etruscan, Roman, Greek, and Renaissance sources, filtered through a sensibility that is unmistakably Victorian in its refinement and attention to surface detail.

Enamel is the most immediately recognisable element of Giuliano's aesthetic. He employed émail en ronde bosse (enamel applied over three-dimensional sculptural forms), champlevé, and plique-à-jour techniques, but his most characteristic work uses opaque and translucent enamels in a palette of black, white, turquoise, and deep red to create polychrome surfaces of extraordinary delicacy. Figures, foliage, grotesques, and heraldic devices are rendered with a miniaturist's precision, often on pendants and brooches no larger than a few centimetres across.

Granulation — the application of minute gold granules to create textured surfaces — appears throughout his output, though scholars have noted that Giuliano's granulation, while technically accomplished, differs from the true diffusion-bonding method used by the Etruscans. His work more closely follows the Castellani approach, using a copper-salt bonding medium that approximates the ancient effect without fully replicating the metallurgical process. This does not diminish the visual achievement; the surfaces of his granulated pieces have a warmth and depth that machine-made jewellery cannot approach.

Wirework and filigree appear in his settings and decorative borders, twisted and plaited into patterns derived from ancient prototypes. Chains, particularly those in the ancient loop-in-loop construction, are a recurring motif, and Giuliano's chains are among the most technically accomplished of the period.

His choice of gemstones was deliberately archaeological in spirit. Cabochon-cut stones — garnets, amethysts, turquoises, opals, and pearls — were preferred over the faceted diamonds and coloured stones that dominated mainstream Victorian jewellery. Cameos and intaglios, both ancient and contemporary, were incorporated into pendants and rings. The overall effect is one of learned restraint: colour and texture are achieved through enamel and surface treatment as much as through gemstone display.

Renaissance Revival and the Aesthetic Movement

Giuliano's mature work from the 1870s and 1880s aligns closely with the broader Aesthetic Movement, which sought to elevate craft to the level of fine art and to resist the perceived vulgarity of industrial production. His pendants in particular — often featuring winged figures, classical busts, or Renaissance grotesque ornament — share a sensibility with the paintings of Edward Burne-Jones and the decorative work of William Morris, though Giuliano's sources were always more specifically Italian and classical than the medievalism favoured by the Pre-Raphaelites.

The Renaissance Revival strand of his work draws on sixteenth-century goldsmiths' designs — the tradition of Benvenuto Cellini and Hans Holbein the Younger's jewellery drawings — and on the great pendant jewels of the Mannerist period, with their baroque pearls formed into the bodies of sea-creatures, tritons, and mermaids. Giuliano's versions of these forms are not slavish copies but creative reinterpretations, adapted to Victorian taste while remaining faithful to the spirit of their sources. Several of his pendants featuring baroque pearl figures with enamelled gold mounts are among the most admired objects of their kind in any collection.

Marks and Attribution

Giuliano pieces are typically signed, which is unusual for Victorian jewellery and reflects the workshop's self-conscious positioning as an artistic enterprise rather than a commercial manufactory. Carlo Giuliano used the mark C.G. within a cartouche, applied to the reverse of pendants, the shanks of rings, and the clasps of necklaces. After the sons took over the business following Carlo's death in 1895, the mark changed to C. & A.G., denoting Carlo Joseph and Arthur Alphonse. This distinction is important for dating and attribution: pieces marked C.G. date from the father's period (broadly 1860s–1895), while C. & A.G. pieces post-date his death and extend to the closure of the firm around 1914.

The sons maintained the workshop's standards and stylistic direction with considerable fidelity, though their output shows a gradual accommodation with Edwardian taste: lighter settings, a greater use of diamonds, and a somewhat more delicate, less monumental character than the father's most ambitious pieces. Both periods are collected, though the father's work generally commands the higher prices at auction.

The Sons and the Later Period

Carlo Joseph and Arthur Alphonse Giuliano were born in London and trained in their father's workshop, absorbing his techniques and his historical vocabulary from childhood. When Carlo senior died in 1895, the transition was seamless: the Piccadilly premises continued, the clientele remained loyal, and the quality of production was sustained. The brothers worked in close collaboration, and it is not possible to assign individual pieces to one or the other with any confidence.

The Edwardian period brought new influences to bear. The Art Nouveau movement, with its organic forms and emphasis on enamel and unusual stones, was congenial to a workshop already expert in those techniques, and some later Giuliano pieces show a tentative engagement with Art Nouveau motifs — sinuous plant forms, dragonfly wings — without abandoning the classical framework that was the firm's foundation. The firm closed around 1914, apparently without successors, and the workshop's tools and stock were dispersed.

Collections and the Market

The Victoria and Albert Museum holds the most significant public collection of Giuliano jewellery, including pieces acquired during the firm's active years and subsequently through bequest and purchase. The collection encompasses pendants, brooches, necklaces, and rings across both the Carlo and the C. & A.G. periods, and is extensively documented in the museum's published catalogues. The British Museum holds a smaller but important group of pieces. Several major private collections assembled in the twentieth century — notably that of the jewellery historian Shirley Bury, whose research did much to establish the scholarly framework for understanding the firm — have subsequently been dispersed at auction.

At auction, Giuliano pieces appear regularly at Christie's, Sotheby's, and Bonhams, typically in the context of Victorian and Edwardian jewellery sales. Prices vary considerably with size, condition, and the complexity of the enamelwork: a small brooch with modest enamel decoration might sell in the low thousands of pounds, while a major pendant with elaborate polychrome enamel, baroque pearl, and gemstone elements can reach tens of thousands. The signed mark is essential to value; unsigned pieces attributed to the workshop on stylistic grounds trade at a significant discount.

Condition of the enamel is the primary concern for collectors. Giuliano's enamel, while technically accomplished, is susceptible to chipping and crazing, particularly in pieces that have been worn regularly. Chips to the enamel surface, even minor ones, substantially affect value. Pearls in Giuliano pieces are frequently natural baroque pearls of the period, and their condition — surface lustre, absence of cracking — is a secondary consideration. Stones are generally secondary to the metalwork in importance, but missing or replaced stones affect both integrity and value.

Significance and Legacy

Carlo Giuliano occupies a position in the history of jewellery analogous to that of William Burges in architecture or William De Morgan in ceramics: a craftsman of the highest technical ability who used historical sources not as a crutch but as a living language, producing work that is simultaneously learned and original. His achievement was to bring the goldsmithing traditions of Renaissance Italy and classical antiquity into dialogue with Victorian aesthetic values, and to do so with a consistency and quality that has ensured the survival of his reputation across more than a century.

His influence on subsequent jewellery design was considerable. The Arts and Crafts jewellers of the 1890s and 1900s — John Paul Cooper, Henry Wilson, the Birmingham Guild of Handicraft — drew on the example of his enamelwork and his insistence on handcraft as an artistic value. The broader revival of interest in archaeological and Renaissance jewellery that has characterised the collector market since the 1970s owes much to the scholarly attention that Giuliano's work has attracted, and to the standard of quality that his pieces set for the field.

Further Reading

• Victoria and Albert Museum — Giuliano Jewellery
• GIA Gems & Gemology — Victorian Jewellery