Category:

But before the questions, before any thought can be given to every hand that touched it on its way to yours—hands that mined it, sculpted it, traded it, and treasured it—the first sight of a remarkable gemstone prompts something simpler. There is a moment of wonder, taking in something so astonishingly beautiful that it clears the mind, a meditative respite from the questions that will soon follow. This first contact is not analytical, or even professional, but purely emotional. There is only the hypnotizing quality of the colors, the movement of light, and the swirling patterns of the gem's internal world. This admiration of natural beauty is intensified by the technical skill of the artisan, the gem formed and fashioned to bring out a life previously hidden within, and set in a marvel of handiwork, at times as stunning as the stone itself.

The Cheapside Hoard watch is just such a combination: nature's miracle uplifted by supreme human craftsmanship. It is also an unusual gem, in that nature provided the casing for the expert's craft, and not the other way around. A timepiece dating to around 1600 had been embedded in a huge hexagonal emerald crystal an inch deep, with a hinged lid, probably cut from the same crystal. The watch face had been cleverly applied with green enamel to blend in, giving the impression of a never-ending gem, and the lid was so fine and transparent that the time could be seen even with the case closed. Although as an object it seemed small—especially sitting in the palm of my hand—the significance of it being made from one single emerald crystal was huge.

The watch is an object whose integrity is as extraordinary as its story. It emerged from a collection of five hundred pieces of predominantly Elizabethan and Jacobean jewelry that lay hidden for centuries beneath a building belonging to the Goldsmiths' Company in the London street of Cheapside, likely buried by one of its tenant jewelers, and somehow lost and forgotten amid the chaos of one of the great mid-seventeenth-century cataclysms—the English Civil War or the Great Fire of London. Dating to the turn of the seventeenth century, the Hoard is the world's largest collection of original jewelry from this era.[2] Emerald pieces are prominent, including an exquisite hat ornament in the shape of a salamander, green stones running along its back, diamonds for its eyes, and splayed golden feet. Yet emerald is just one of a wide range of stones from diverse origins that decorate the collection: diamonds from India, rubies from Burma, sapphires from Sri Lanka, pearls from the Persian Gulf, and peridots from Egypt—all helping to sketch a picture of the continent-crossing supply chains that fed the Elizabethan jewelry trade.

Even among this rich cache, the watch stands out. Unlike most of the other gems in the collection, brought to Europe along the Asian Silk Route, the emerald had an even more exotic origin: it had arrived in Europe from the "New World," direct from Colombia. It was the product of the bloody Spanish conquest that had been unfolding since the 1530s, in pursuit of the land of El Dorado.[*1] The Cheapside emerald watch would have been one of the earliest emeralds brought to Europe from Colombia, and among the best.

That the crystal was from one of the few Colombian emerald mines in operation when Spanish conquistadores arrived in the sixteenth century was confirmed by analysis, but it is also immediately evident from the distinctive size and quality of the crystal. Until the Spanish returned from this "New World," no large, high-quality emeralds were in use in the West, which relied entirely on small, lower-grade deposits in Egypt, Austria, and Pakistan.[3] For the period, the size of the crystal was remarkable. It was also a pristine example of the emerald's natural hexagonal form, polished down to perfection and given delicate beveled edges. Although Colombian emeralds were already entering the European market by the mid-1500s, local jewelers would have seen little like this one before.[4] The emerald must have been a near-unique treasure arriving in London and would have astonished anyone who set eyes on it. The gem certainly left me stunned when I first saw it and picked it up, some four hundred years later.

These clues establish the bare bones of the jewel's origin: an emerald mined in Colombia, transported to Europe by Spanish traders around 1600, and fitted with a mechanism probably commissioned specifically for its crystal casing. But what we know about the Cheapside watch is dwarfed by the many secrets it will never give up. Many more pages are missing from its story. We are none the wiser about the identities of those who respectively extracted such a miraculous crystal, transported it across continents, and cut and fashioned it—a remarkable feat of skill at a time when the relevant techniques would not have been well known.

More mysterious still is the question of where that long and fragile supply chain was due to end. Who was the ultimate owner of such a remarkable and hugely valuable object? Did they commission the watch for themselves, or was it a jeweler's notion, to be pressed on a biddable client? And more intriguingly still, given the nature of its discovery, what of the patron who we assume must first have owned such a stunning piece? That it was discovered among a jeweler's stash invites questions about the status of the owner or intended recipient, and the nature of the transaction. Maybe it was waiting to be collected, had been returned for repair or safekeeping, or perhaps even been put up as collateral by someone who had run into financial difficulties. This masterpiece of jewelry making, with its combination of extraordinary material and visionary craftsmanship, might just have been reluctantly surrendered by an owner who had once known and prized it. Or it could never have been collected at all. That we can never know the answer is part of this magical object's charm. Even unearthed from its hiding place, it retains its mystique, holding on to secrets it will never share and a story whose full truth can never be told.

*  *  *

The survival of the Cheapside watch is a miracle that is the sum of many parts. Numerous alternative fates might have prevented it from ever seeing the light of day. It might have fallen victim to one of the shipwrecks that bedeviled merchant transports from the New World. It could easily have shattered under the tools of a craftsman who would probably never have worked on a crystal of this material or magnitude. And, had it not been subject to what was likely a hasty hideaway under the streets of East London, it would almost certainly have suffered the indignity of being cut down and divided into many smaller, more manageable pieces at some point in its history.