Pair of silver-gilt filigree earrings, set with garnets, with seed pearl pendants, Venice, 1700-1799.

Pair of silver-gilt filigree pendent earrings decorated with garnets and pearls. The top part consists of an openwork fan of sheet metal with applied wire decoration, and a rosette in the centre with a central garnet. This fan is attached at its top to a long straight wire which continues down the back to form a loop at the bottom of the fan, from which hangs the pendant. The body of each pendant is made of thin sheet metal decorated with applied wire. It is shaped like a vase with a wide shallow sphere, like two saucers, at the base and an open filigree bead at the top linked to it by a short tube. Four struts of flat ribbon link the perimeters of each sphere on the outside. There are single seed pearls attached by wire to the front of the top part, round the top of the fan, and on the centre of each strut of the pendant. There is a bunch of wired pearls hanging by a knot of twisted wire from the lower right and left corners of the top part, and eight similar bunches hanging down from the circumference of the lower sphere, with a ninth in the centre of its bottom side.

Earrings of this kind, with pendants representing a highly stylised jar and always with the same core design however much overlaid with additional elements, are probably of Venetian origin. They were part of the traditional costume throughout northern Italy, in places such as Friuli, and were also worn in the Venetian territories on the eastern coast of the Adriatic, in what is now Montenegro. They are also found in the Greek islands of the Aegean, such as the Cyclades and Dodecanese, where they are sometimes enamelled.

These were described as 17th century Venetian when they were acquired by the Museum in 1909, but are more likely to date from the 18th century.

M.79&A-1909