Roman Bead Necklace - Faience, Stone & Glass, Double Strand

Mediterranean, Levant and Roman. A double-stranded necklace assembled from an array of ancient beads, their forms and hues gathered across centuries of Roman craft. Faience beads glazed in turquoise and blue mingle with carved stone and lustrous glass, the palette ranging from amber and ochre to deep cobalt. The variety of shapes rewards close looking: miniature juglets, crisp pyramids, and small animal forms punctuate rounded and cylindrical spacers. Faience, a self-glazing quartz paste, was prized in antiquity for its luminous surface and amuletic associations, while wound and drawn glass beads speak to the sophistication of Mediterranean workshops. The ancient beads have been strung on modern strands, rendering this composite ornament comfortably wearable, a tangible link between the adornment of the ancient world and the collector's hand today. Faience, an ancient non-clay ceramic of ground quartz coated with an alkaline glaze, held deep significance in ancient belief. Its characteristic blue-green sheen evoked the life-giving qualities of the Nile and the heavens, and the material was known as tjehenet, meaning "that which is brilliant" or "dazzling." Beads of this type served as amulets and elements of protective jewelry across millennia. Small figural beads in the shapes of juglets, animals, and geometric solids often carried apotropaic or fertility associations. Roman glassworkers, inheritors and innovators of earlier Near Eastern techniques, produced beads in a spectrum of colors through wound, drawn, and mosaic methods, trading them widely across the empire. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. Item # 200415

Estimate:£167.78

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