The Victoria and Albert museum, London hold similar designs for jewellery and the lower design of the three is closest to the design that was executed by Carlo Giuliano in c. 1890
Burne-Jones’s experiments in three-dimensional art were unusually varied: there exist studies for embroidered shoes (1877) as well as for the seal of the University of Wales (1894), and in 1895 he designed the scenery and costumes for Henry Irving's production of Comyns Carr s stage play King Arthur. 1 The design of jewelry was a natural development of his interests, and was first stimulated by Ruskin, in his role as the benefactor of female education. In 1877 Ruskin's support had been sought by John Faunthorpe, the Principal of Whitelands College, a teacher training institution then in Chelsea, and the initial gift of books was expanded in 1881 into the inauguration of a May Queen festival, at which the student thought by her peers the "likeablest and loveablest" (Ruskin's phrase) would be presented with a gold cross. 2 This would carry a motif of hawthorn blossom, appropriate not only for the season and in symbolizing hope in the Victorian language of flowers, but also carrying an association for Ruskin with his beloved Rose laTouche, who "has gone," he had written on her death in 1875, "to where the hawthorn blossoms go." 3 Unhappy with the first attempts, Ruskin asked Burne-Jones to design the cross for 1883, presumably aware of the artist's similar attraction to the flower (see cat. no. 64). The commission gave Burne-Jones a surprising amount of trouble, as a letter of April reveals: "You don't know how hard I find that little cross to do — I think I have made fifty designs — but yesterday I chose 3 for you — and I want you to say which you like best." 4 From these designs (now in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York), Ruskin chose the square Roman cross with its intertwining branches, which was cleverly executed by London and Ryder. It was presented to Edith Martindale at the May Queen ceremony by Georgiana Burne-Jones, on Ruskin's behalf. Strangely, it was considered "not hawthorny enough" by the recipient's botanist father, a view which Ruskin must have conceded, as the design for future crosses was entrusted to Arthur Severn, the artist husband of Ruskin's cousin Joan. 5 It is likely that in preparation for this design, Burne-Jones returned to copies of Byzantine and medieval jewels which he seems to have made in earlier sketchbooks. These appear alongside studies from nature, and may well have been prompted, as Charlotte Gere and Geoffrey Munn have sug- gested, by reproductions of medieval stylized floral decoration in Ruskin's Stones of Venice. 6 This was the kind of simplified decorative form which inspired Burne-Jones's subsequent designs for jewelry. He was always fascinated by rich marble and precious stones, on one occasion giving to Frances Horner his thoughts about individual jewels: "Sapphire is truth and I am never without it. … Ruby is passion and I need it not. … And topaz is jealousy, and is right nasty. … Pras is a wicked little jewel — have none of him. I gave one to Margaret, and it winked and blinked and looked so evil, she put it away. And I got her a moonstone that she might never know love, and stay with me. It did no good but it was wonderful to look at — cold and desolate— and you sighed when you looked at it as when you look at the moon." 7 These would have been kept in the heart-shaped leather jewel box, tooled with golden willow boughs, which was a wedding present to his daughter, Margaret, in September 1888. 8 The "Secret" Book of Designs (cat. no. 140), begun in 1885, shows on its final pages many designs for brooches and pen- dants, including the first idea for a design described by Georgie: "I only remember one thing which he carefully and completely designed and saw executed, a brooch, representing a dove, made of pink coral and turquoise, surounded by olive- branches of green enamel." 9 Of this there are at least two other versions than catalogue number 137: one belonged to Margaret Burne-Jones, and another was owned by Laura Lyttelton (nee Tennant), who bequeathed it to Frances Horner's daughter Cicely. 10 Other jewelry almost certainly made to Burne-Jones s design includes a group of brooches in the form of enameled wings with a central stone, made by the firm of Child and Child. 11 1. Arts Council 1975-76, nos. 213, 222, and Poulson 1986, pp. 21-24. 2. See Malcolm Cole, "Be like daisies": John Ruskin and the Cultivation of Beauty at Whitelands College, Ruskin Lecture 1992, St. Albans, 1992. 3. Quoted in Gere and Munn 1989, p. 126. 4. Ibid., p. 131. 5. In a letter from Ruskin to Joan Severn, January 1884; ibid., p. 133. 6. Ibid., p. 134. Other designs for jewelry in the Byzantine style appear in a sketchbook now in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; see Art Gallery of Ontario 1993-94, p. 223, fig. 1-1. 7. Memorials, vol. 2, pp. 223-24. 8. Reproduced in Gere and Munn 1989, colourpl. 69. 9. Memorials, vol. 2, p. 132; the design (British Museum, 1899-7-13-543, one of three on the sheet) is reproduced in Vallance 1900, fig. 21, and addi- tional studies relating to the brooch are in a sketchbook at the Victoria and Albert Museum (Gere and Munn 1989, pi. 8r). 10. Gere and Munn 1989, p. 138. On Laura Lyttelton's death in childbirth in 1886, Burne-Jones designed an elegant memorial tablet for the church at Mells, depicting a peacock perched on a sarcophagus (fig. 100). 11. Ibid., p. 149, colourpl. 71.