character, of the 2nd or 3rd century B.C. In the early Christian
era, also, many Greek and Roman gems were recut with Gnostic
and other peculiar and obscure devices.
In the later Roman period, the 3rd and 4th centuries, a great decline in the art is seen—so great that Castellani terms it “the idiotic age.” Numbers of gems of this kind have been found together, as though they were the product of a single manufacturer, carved in the crudest manner, both in design and execution. Yet remarkable results are sometimes produced in these by a few touches of the drill, which under the glass appear very crude but nevertheless yield strong effects. The same thing may be seen now in many of the Japanese sketches and lacquer designs, where a whole landscape is depicted, or rather suggested, by a few simple but powerful strokes. It is now thought that some of these seals may be of earlier origin than has been supposed, and also that they may have been worn by the poorer classes, who could not afford the more finished work. They must have been made by the hundred thousand. The decline of the art went on until in the Byzantine period, especially the 6th century, it had reached a very low point. Most of the gems of this period show drill-work of poor quality, although hand-work is occasionally seen.
With the Renaissance, the art of gem carving revived, and the engravers from that time and onward have produced results that equal the best Greek and Roman work; copies of ancient gem carvings made by some of the 18th-century masters are only distinguishable from true antiques by experts of great proficiency. It is in fact extremely difficult to judge positively as to the age of engraved gems. The materials of which they are made are hard and resistant to any change through time, and there are many ingenious devices for producing the appearances usually believed to indicate great age, such as slightly dulled or scratched surfaces and the like. There are also the gems with secondary carving, already alluded to, and the ancient gems that have been partially recut by modern engravers for the purpose of fraudulently enhancing their price. All these elements enter into the problem and make it an almost hopeless one for any but a person of great experience in the study of such objects; and even he may not be able in all cases to decide.
Until the 14th century, almost all the gems were cut en cabochon—that is, smoothly rounded, as carbuncles and opals are still—or else in the form of beads drilled from both sides for suspension or attachment, the two perforations often meeting but imperfectly. These latter may be of Asiatic origin, brought into Europe by commerce during the Crusades. Some of the finest gems in the Austrian, Russian and German crowns are stones of this perforated or bead type. An approach, or transition, to the modern facetting is seen in a style of cutting often used for rock-crystal in the 10th and 11th centuries: an oval cabochon was polished flat, and the sides of the dome were also trimmed flat, with a rounded back, and the upper side with a ridge in the centre, tapering off to the girdle of the stone below.
The plane facetted cutting is altogether modern; and hence the pictures which represent the breastplate of the ancient Jewish high-priest as set with facetted stones are wholly imaginary and probably incorrect, as we have no exact knowledge of the forms of the gems. The Orientals polish gems in all sorts of irregular, rounded shapes, according to the form of the piece as found, and with the one object of preserving as much of its original size and colour as possible. The greatest ingenuity is used to make a speck of colour, as in a sapphire, tone up an entire gem, by cutting it so that there is a point of high colour at the lower side of the gem.
In later times a few facets are sometimes cut upon a generally rounded stone. The cabochon method is still used for opaque or translucent stones, as opal, moonstone, turquoise, carbuncle, &c.; but for transparent gems the facetted cutting is almost always employed, on account of its fine effect in producing brilliancy, by reflection or refraction of light from the under side of the gem. Occasionally the ancients used natural crystals with polished faces, or perhaps at times polished these to some extent artificially. This use of crystals was frequent with prisms of emerald, which were drilled and suspended as drops. Those the French call “primes d’émeraudes.” These were often natural crystals from Zaborah, Egypt or the Tirol Mountains, drilled through the height of the prism, and with little or no polishing. In rare instances perfect and brilliant crystals may now be seen mounted as gems.
The modern method is that of numerous facets, geometrically disposed to bring out the beauty of light and colour to the best advantage. This is done at the sacrifice of material, often to the extent of half the stone or even more—the opposite of the Oriental idea. There are various forms of such cutting, but three are specially employed, known as the brilliant, the rose and the table-cut. The last, generally made from cleavage pieces, usually square or oblong, with a single facet or edge on each side, and occasionally four or more facets on the lower side of the stone, is used chiefly for emeralds, rubies and sapphires; the two former for diamonds in particular. The brilliant is essentially a low, double cone, its top truncated to form a large flat eight-sided face called the table, and its basal apex also truncated by a very small face known as the culette or cullet. The upper and lower slopes are cut into a series of triangular facets, 32 above the girdle, in four rows of eight, and 24 below, in three rows, making 56 facets in all. The rose form is used for diamonds not thick enough to cut as brilliants; it is flat below and has 12 to 24, or sometimes 32, triangular facets above, in three rows, meeting in a point. Stones thus cut are also known as “roses couronnées”; others with fewer facets, twelve or even six, are called “roses d’Anvers,” and are a specialty, as their name implies, at Antwerp. These, however, are only cut from very thin or shallow stones. None of the rose-cut diamonds is equal in beauty to the brilliants. There are several other forms, among which are the “briolette,” “marquise,” oval and pear-shaped stones, &c., but they are of minor importance. The pear-shaped brilliant is a facetted ball or drop, being a brilliant in style of cutting, although the form of the gem is elongated or drop-shaped. The “marquise” or “navette” form is an elliptical brilliant of varying width in proportion to its length. The “rondelle” form consists of flat, circular gems with smooth sides pierced, like shallow beads, with facetted edges, and is sometimes used between pearls, or gem beads, and in the coloured gems, such as rubies, sapphires, emeralds, &c. The mitred gems fitted to a gauge are much used and are closely set together, forming a continuous line of colour.
Modern gem cutting and engraving are done by means of the lathe, which can be made to revolve with extreme rapidity, carrying a point or small disk of soft iron, with diamond-dust and oil. The disks vary in diameter from that of a pin-head to a quarter of an inch. Better than the lathe, also, is the S. S. White dental engine, which the present writer was the first to suggest for this use. The flexibility and sensitiveness of this machine enables it to respond to the touch of the artist and to impart a personal quality to his work not possible with the mechanical action of the lathe, and more like the hand-work with the sapphire point. The diamond-dust and oil, thus applied, will carve any stone softer than the diamond itself with comparative ease.
We may now review some of the special forms of cutting and working gems and ornamental stones that have been developed in Europe since the period of the Renaissance.
Garnets (q.v.) have been used and worked from remote antiquity; but in modern times the cutting of them has been carried on chiefly in Bohemia, in the region around Merowitz and Dlaskowitch. The stones occur in a trap rock, and are weathered out by its decomposition and gathered from gravels and beds of streams. They are of the rich red variety known as pyrope (q.v.), or Bohemian garnet; it is generally valued as a gem-stone. Such are the so-called “Cape rubies,” of South Africa, found in considerable quantity in German East Africa, and the beautiful garnets known as the “Arizona rubies.” Garnets are so abundant in Bohemia as to constitute an important industry, employing some five hundred miners, an equal number of cutters and as many as three thousand dealers. Extensive garnet cutting is also done in India, especially at Jeypore, where there are large works employing natives who have been taught by Europeans. The Indian garnets, however, are mostly of another variety, the almandine (q.v.); it is equally rich in colour, though
