Italian women have always loved lavish display. Even for the poorest, a rich show of jewellery was all important. Italian goldsmiths were expert at making a little material go a very long way. Many pieces seem too large to wear comfortably, but they are usually made of very thin gold, and are much lighter than they appear. Goldsmiths in the south of Italy made lavish use of seed pearls, which were abundant in the warm waters of the Mediterranean before the industrial age. They attached the seed pearls with thin gold wires. When these broke, as they frequently did, the pearls were lost.

All Italian women wore gold earrings. Their shapes varied widely in different places. This earring comes from Procida in Campania, but earrings of this type were made and worn throughout southern Italy.

This earring has gold marks of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from the early 19th century, and the maker’s mark AC, which is probably that of Antonio Caccavallo of Naples. It was bought as part of the Castellani collection of Italian Peasant Jewellery at the International Exhibition, Paris, 1867.