Cypriot Amethyst Earrings - The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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Cypriot Amethyst Earrings

	For more than 2,000 years Cyprus has been a way station for ships circulating around the eastern Mediterranean. The exposure of Cypriot craftsmen to foreign artistic styles from both East and West is reflected in the distinctive hybrid forms of jewelry that, by the Classical period (475–325 B.C.), represent an amalgam of Greek, Near Eastern, and indigenous styles. Our earrings are based on an original pair of 5th–4th century B.C. earrings in the Museum’s collection that feature boat-shaped carnelian mounted in gold settings that are worked in delicate filigree. The settings are embellished with granulation, an ancient form of ornamentation in which tiny grains of gold are fused to an underlying surface metal. Such a combination of a gold setting and a semiprecious stone, while familiar in rings, is not characteristic of mainland Greek jewelry of the Classical period, but rather jewelry from the East, where colored stones and glass were used with gold beginning as early as the Archaic period (ca. 700–480 B.C.). 14K gold with 24K gold plate set with hand-carved amethysts. Length 1 1/8 in. Pierced, with 14K gold ear wires. Cypriot Amethyst Earrings 09-040114 Member Price: $607.50 each Non-Member Price: $675.00 each Quantity: