The Jacobean style takes its name from Iacobus, the Latin form of James, and denotes the English decorative arts and architecture of the reign of James I (1603 to 1625), with extensions into the early years of Charles I until roughly 1635. In jewellery, the period sits between the late Elizabethan style and the Caroline style of the mid-seventeenth century, and is best understood as a transitional moment in which the highly figural, allegorical and emblematic Renaissance jewellery of the late sixteenth century begins to give way to the looser, looser-set and more naturalistic forms that would mark the second half of the seventeenth century.

Historical and cultural context

James VI of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth I as James I of England in 1603, uniting the Scottish and English crowns. His court, and that of his queen, Anne of Denmark, brought continental European tastes (particularly Danish, German and French) into closer dialogue with the English tradition. The accession also coincided with the early decades of the East India Company (chartered 1600) and the increasing flow of Asian and South American gem material into London. The Tower of London regalia, the Crown Jewels inventory, the surviving gem and jewel inventories of Anne of Denmark and the personal jewellery of court figures including Robert Cecil and the Howard family form the principal documentary record.

Stylistic features

Jacobean jewellery is recognised by several features. First, the continuation and gradual loosening of the late Elizabethan emblematic tradition: pendant jewels with figural scenes, table-cut diamonds and rubies in heavy black-enamelled gold settings, and the use of complex emblematic devices (mottos, ciphers, allegorical figures) drawn from the same Renaissance vocabulary that had defined the late sixteenth century. Second, an increase in the use of pearls, often in long ropes and as drops, reflecting both the queen's own taste and the new South Asian trade routes. Third, the appearance of the so-called "Stuart pieces" in carved rock crystal, often with miniatures or hair beneath the crystal, that anticipate the Caroline mourning and memorial tradition. Fourth, the Jacobean pendant cross, often elaborately enamelled and set with table-cut stones, and the Jacobean girdle hanger, a long ornamented chain worn from the waist with pomanders, scent boxes or a small book attached.

Diamond use in this period is dominated by the table cut, a thick-girdled rectangular form polished with a small flat table and large pavilion facets, set face-up in heavy gold collets often backed with foil. The rose cut, which would dominate the Caroline and Restoration periods, appears in Jacobean work from about 1610 onwards but is not yet the standard. Coloured stones — emerald from the new Spanish-American Colombian trade, ruby and sapphire from Burma and Ceylon, garnet — are set as cabochons or as table cuts.

Surviving examples

Major surviving Jacobean jewels include the Lyte Jewel (British Museum, 1610-1611), a gold and enamel pendant with a miniature of James I given by the king to Thomas Lyte, the Heneage Jewel or Armada Jewel (Victoria and Albert Museum, c. 1595, transitional Elizabethan-Jacobean), the Phoenix Jewel (British Museum), and various enamelled gold and gem-set pendants in the Cheapside Hoard (Museum of London), the principal archaeological deposit of early seventeenth-century London goldsmithing. The Hoard, recovered in 1912 from a cellar in Cheapside, contains roughly 500 pieces deposited around 1640 and represents the working stock of a London jeweller covering the late Elizabethan, Jacobean and early Caroline periods.

Position in the broader history

The Jacobean style is generally treated in the survey literature as a sub-period within the longer Stuart period of English jewellery (1603 to 1714), and it is in dialogue with parallel developments in continental Europe — the Spanish court style of Philip III and IV, the French Henri IV and Louis XIII court, the Dutch Republic's emerging burgher patronage — with which it shared cutters, designers and itinerant goldsmiths. The dispersal of the Cheapside Hoard among the major English museums has provided the most coherent material foundation for the study of Jacobean jewellery; the textual record, by contrast, depends heavily on probate inventories, royal household accounts and the surviving portrait literature.

Modern collecting

Genuine Jacobean jewellery is exceptionally rare in private hands. The major museums hold most of the surviving named examples, and the trade in Jacobean and early Stuart pieces is largely conducted through specialist auction-house departments at Christie's London, Sotheby's London and Wartski. Nineteenth-century revival pieces in the Jacobean manner, particularly from the 1840 to 1880 period, are more common and are themselves now well-collected; they are generally identified by their use of post-Renaissance enamel chemistry, mid-nineteenth-century diamond cuts and modern goldsmithing techniques.