basket Your basket >
>
Your wishlist >
reset search

We offer layaway, spread payments on the piece of your dreams. Ask us for details. Free insured shipping on all orders !!!

jewelry glossary

Antique jewelry glossary

Welcome to our extensive antique jewelry glossary with around 1,500 jewelry related entries.If you feel you are missing an explanation, feel free to let us know and we will add it.

A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - M - N - O - P - Q - R - S - T - U - V - W - X - Y - Z     all

Aigrette

aigrette

A gold or silver hat ornament to support a feather, or made in the form of a jewelled feather or sometimes a brooch supporting a jewelled feather.

Shaped like an egret plume (hence the name), it was often almost entirely set with small gemstones, and sometimes also enamelled; it might be further adorned with light, vibrating, vertical metal stalks. A slide or vertical pin was occasionally provided, enabling the ornament to be worn in the hair or attached to a headdress.

Aigrettes were in use from the 17th century until the late 18th, and again in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

From: An Illustrated Dictionary of Jewelry, autor: Harold Newman, publishers: Thames and Hudson

Aigrette

Aigrette (from the French for egret, or lesser white heron), the tufted crest, or head-plumes of the egret, used for adorning a woman's head-dress, the term being also given to any similar ornament, in gems. Aigrettes, studded with diamonds and rubies also decorated the turbans of Ottoman sultans or the ceremonial chamfron of their horses. Several of these aigrettes are on display in the Treasury of the Topkap Palace in Istanbul, Turkey.

An aigrette is also worn by certain ranks of officers in the French army.

By analogy the word is used in various sciences for feathery excrescences of like appearance, as for the tufts on the heads of insects, the feathery down of the dandelion, the luminous rays at the end of electrified bodies, or the luminous rays seen in solar eclipses, diverging from, the moon's edge.

The 61.50 carat (12.3 g) whiskey-coloured diamond, "The Eye of the Tiger", was mounted by Cartier in a turban aigrette for the Jam Saheb or Maharajah of Nawanagar in 1934.

From: Wikipedia

Jewelry Glossary

Missing an explanation?
click here to request one

Jewelry Theme Search
Antique Jewelry Lecture
Adin Wallpapers    Help    Shipping Policy    Dealer Terms    Special Requests    Follow us on :   Twitter   Facebook   Google+   Instagram   Links
Home  |   Site Security  |   Track your Order   |   Return Policy   |   Contact Us  |   Antwerp  |   Terms And Conditions   |   Site Map  |   Blog  |   Testimonials  |   In Memoriam