Sředověké motivy ve šperku a bižuterii 19. století

In the late 18th century, in the periods of classicism and the Enlightenment, society started to turn to the past, namely the Middle Ages. This interest escalated in the period of romanticism, in the first third of the 19th century. After the difficult era of the Napoleonic wars, patriotic feelings in a number of countries increased and many of them inclined to Catholicism. The burgeoning industrial revolution inspired a backlash in efforts to preserve crafts and return to the ethic of individual manual work and craftsmanship. These feelings resulted in the romanticist Gothic (Gothic Revival) movement, reflected in architecture, interior decoration and furniture. Fashion of the late empire period and the Biedermeier also featured 15th- and 16th-century elements. Clothes were decorated with jewellery and ornaments in medieval style, as demonstrated by special types of jewellery and motifs largely borrowed from architecture. In the early 19th century, cast-iron jewellery became popular. Its morphology consisted of the tracery, pinnacles, quadrilobes and leaf-work seen in Gothic cathedrals. Jewellery made of precious metals imitated pieces known from portraits by Lucas Cranach, Albrecht Dürer and the Italian masters: chains with pendant crosses, ferronière headdresses, bracelets, brooches and rings decorated with white, red and green enamels and stones cut into smooth cabochons. In Anglo-Saxon countries, medieval-style sets with inscriptions exhorting obedience and piety were made for brides. In the course of the 19th century, historicism evolved from a romantic approach to an exact imitation of the Gothic. Although the romanticist Gothic and neo-Gothic were not the only styles prevailing, they played an important part within 19th-century historicism movements.