Holbeinesque jewellery includes pendants, brooches and earrings in the neo-Renaissance or Renaissance Revival style, and once again became fashionable in the 1860s. The designs differ from the older stylised and pious neo-Gothic jewellery, in that they are extravagantly opulent - this richness of form and colour which had appealed to the Tudor

Tudor dynasty

The Tudor dynasty or House of Tudor was a European royal house of Welsh origin that ruled the Kingdom of England and its realms, including the Lordship of Ireland, later the Kingdom of Ireland, from 1485 until 1603. Its first monarch was Henry Tudor, a descendant through his mother of a legitimised...

 court was rediscovered by Victorian

Victorian era

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

 jewellers and their patrons, reviving a fashion that flourished into the early 1900s.

The style is characterised by a large, centrally-placed cabochon

Cabochon

A cabochon , from the Middle French caboche , is a gemstone which has been shaped and polished as opposed to faceted. The resulting form is usually a convex top with a flat bottom. Cutting en cabochon is usually applied to opaque gems, while faceting is usually applied to transparent stones...

 gemstone, cameo or intaglio

Intaglio

Intaglio are techniques in art in which an image is created by cutting, carving or engraving into a flat surface and may also refer to objects made using these techniques:* Intaglio , a group of printmaking techniques with an incised image...

 mounted in gold and colourful enamel work, such as basse-taille

Basse-taille

Basse-taille is an enamelling technique in which the artist creates a low-relief pattern in metal, usually silver or gold, by engraving or chasing. The entire pattern is created in such a way that its highest point is lower than the surrounding metal...

, champlevé

Champlevé

Champlevé is an enamelling technique in the decorative arts, or an object made by that process, in which troughs or cells are carved or cast into the surface of a metal object, and filled with vitreous enamel. The piece is then fired until the enamel melts, and when cooled the surface of the object...

, cloisonné

Cloisonné

Cloisonné is an ancient technique for decorating metalwork objects, in recent centuries using vitreous enamel, and in older periods also inlays of cut gemstones, glass, and other materials. The resulting objects can also be called cloisonné...

 and en ronde bosse. Beneath this, a drop-shaped pearl or diamond-set lozenge was suspended. The back of each piece is often elaborately engraved using scroll and foliate ornamentation. Such designs were inspired by the art of Hans Holbein the Younger

Hans Holbein the Younger

Hans Holbein the Younger was a German artist and printmaker who worked in a Northern Renaissance style. He is best known as one of the greatest portraitists of the 16th century. He also produced religious art, satire and Reformation propaganda, and made a significant contribution to the history...

, and were often copied from jewellery depicted in Holbein's portraits of Tudor ladies from the court of Henry VIII by jewellers such as John Brogden

John Brogden (jeweller)

John Brogden was a Victorian manufacturing jeweller.He was appenticed to a London firm of watch and clockmakers, becoming a partner in 1831 with James William Garland, with a workshop in Bridgewater Square. From 1842 to 1864 he was a partner in the firm of Watherston and Brogden , goldsmiths of 16...

 and his fellow worker, Carlo Giuliano

Carlo Giuliano

Carlo Giuliano was a goldsmith and jeweller operating in London from 1875. He started work in Naples for Alessandro Castellani and was sent to London to establish a branch of the Casa Castellani. He left Castellani's employ in 1867 and in turn worked for Robert Phillips, Harry Emanuel, Hunt &...

. Other jewellery houses producing Holbeinesque pieces, were those of Jules Wièse, Boucheron

Boucheron

Boucheron is a French jewellery house.-History:The House of Boucheron is a French family dynasty founded by Frederic Boucheron in 1858....

, Chaumet

Chaumet

The House of Chaumet , founded in 1780, is a high end jeweler based in Paris. -Contemporary period : Bankruptcy, Investcorp, LVMH :...

 and Vever. Besides paintings of his sitters wearing their jewellery, Holbein also left detailed drawings of pieces, some copied from his sitters' pieces, some of his own design.

The motifs used came from classical mythology or from 16th-century Mannerist ornamentation, involving hybrid human/animal forms known as grotesque

Grotesque

The word grotesque comes from the same Latin root as "Grotto", meaning a small cave or hollow. The original meaning was restricted to an extravagant style of Ancient Roman decorative art rediscovered and then copied in Rome at the end of the 15th century...

s, torsos ending in columns or pedestals called terms

Term (architecture)

In Classical architecture a term or terminal figure is a human head and bust that continues as a square tapering pillarlike form. If the bust is of Hermes as protector of boundaries in ancient Greek culture, with male genitals interrupting the plain base at the appropriate height, it may be...

, and chimeras

Chimera (mythology)

The Chimera or Chimaera was, according to Greek mythology, a monstrous fire-breathing female creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of multiple animals: upon the body of a lioness with a tail that ended in a snake's head, the head of a goat arose on her back at the center of her...

. Putti, quatrefoil

Quatrefoil

The word quatrefoil etymologically means "four leaves", and applies to general four-lobed shapes in various contexts.-In heraldry:In heraldic terminology, a quatrefoil is a representation of a flower with four petals, or a leaf with four leaflets . It is sometimes shown "slipped", i.e. with an...

 and fantastic masks were often used for embellishment.

Holbeinesque jewellers could avail themselves of a vast range of reference sources for their designs. Many jewellery items survived from the Renaissance, books on design by artists of the 15th and 16th centuries, and court portraits of the rich and influential figures of the period by artists such as Raphael

Raphael

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...

, Holbein and Cranach

Lucas Cranach the Elder

Lucas Cranach the Elder , was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving...

.