International studio (52.1914)

Mr. and Mrs. Gaskins Jewellery

THEfjEWELLERY OF MR. AND
MRS. ARTHUR GASKIN, BY
ARTHUR S. WAINWRIGHT.
It is a very easy task to write an appreciation of
the jewellery of Mr. and Mrs. Gaskin to-day.
Fifteen years ago when their workwas first illustrated
in The Studio it was another matter, but we have
all progressed considerably since then, and the
purchasing public are gradually learning to demand
that art shall enter into the jeweller’s craft, and the
leading manufacturers of to-day are more and more
recognising this demand unquestionably.
Opinion will differ as to what constitutes good
jewellery, but certain conditions may be laid down
as necessary. Jewels to be mounted should be
beautiful and possibly possess symbolical and
poetical interest as well. Mere rarity should not be
the standard of their artistic value nor should per-
fection of form or cutting, which may be carried to
an arbitrary degree. Further, when mounted, their
settings should also be beautiful and designed
to supplement the beauty of the stone. More than
this, the jewels themselves should dominate the
design and not be mere specks of colour inter-
polated apparently by accident on what might other-
wise be properly called goldsmith’s work.
How far did the jewellery of the Victorian age
fulfil these conditions ? On looking back we find
that the goldsmith’s work, either wrought or
stamped, was more or less indifferently copied from
Etruscan or other styles,
with stones dotted here
and there in a meaningless
way; the gems were
matched and grouped
more for their technical
perfection of form and
purity than for their in¬
trinsic beauty, into stiff
commonplace patterns,
and were usually so
mounted that the setting,
instead of supplementing
their beauty such as it was,
was practically concealed
by the skill of the mounter.
Trivial objects in nature
or in daily use were faith¬
fully copied and some-
times smothered with
gems.
It was very late in the
nineteenth century that the

awakening came. Here and there trade jewellers
had realised the shortcomings of our home manu-
facturers and by importing the more decorative if
somewhat crude productions of the East, helped to
develop a truer sense of colour and design ; but
more was due to the efforts of a small body of earnest
craftsmen who, turning their attention to this branch
of art, set to work to make artistic jewellery as they
considered it should be made. Some of the work
they turned out, no doubt, appeared very primitive
from the “ trade ” point of view. But these crafts-
men did not stop to ask if a stone was valuable or
rare, as long as in their eyes it was beautiful—and
in their eyes the simplest pebble had a beauty to
which the tradition-bound jeweller was blind.
Instead of worshipping the many-faceted diamond,
which dances and sparkles in the light, but never
discloses more to the observer than its first dazzling
brilliance, they preferred, say, the soft colour of the
cabochon-cut sapphire, which though possibly
flawed and imperfect in colour (and therefore
anathema to the trade jeweller!) yet possesses
beauties which grow upon the beholder more and
more. Instead of the monotonously symmetrical
stone they valued the more irregular cutting of the
Indian workman who strives only to show the best
that the stone contains from a decorative point of
view.
It was in this spirit that Mr. and Mrs. Gaskin
first essayed the making of jewellery. Choosing
simple, inexpensive stones, solely for the qualities


TWO PAIRS OF SILVER CLASPS, SET WITH LAPIS-LAZULI. DESIGNED AND
EXECUTED BY ARTHUR J. AND GEORGINA CAVE GASKIN

293