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Ralph Huntington Blanchard

Brooch
Now On View

Maker

Ralph Huntington Blanchard (American, 1875 - 1936), designer
Blanchard’s Egyptian Museum (early to mid-1900s), retailer

Culture

Egyptian

Title

Brooch

Year

ca. 1900

Medium

  • Gold with chrysocolla chalcedony

Materials/Techniques

Techniques

  • Gold with chrysocolla chalcedony

Materials

gold

Dimensions

Length: 11.1 cm (4 3/8 inches)

Credit / Object Number

Credit

Gift of Mrs. Gustav Radeke

Object Number

11.036

Type

  • Jewelry

Exhibition History

European Galleries
Sep 02, 2017

Label copy

The Grand Tour—an educational and experiential venture taken by young European aristocrats in the 1700s and 1800s—provided ample opportunities for collecting. The objects in this case were produced for and purchased by travelers.

Made of small pieces of glass, micromosaics in all sizes—from tabletops to jewelry—were prized for their colorful and intricate depictions, often of famous Roman sites. Mosaic jewelry also took on the form of pietra dura (hard stone), the decorative inlay of semiprecious polished stones, often in a dark ground, as seen on the floral brooch.

Archeological discoveries inspired design, including the brooch and earrings at left, featuring scarab beetles like those in ancient Egyptian art. As visitors to Italy flocked to archaeological sites at Pompeii and Herculaneum, artisans capitalized on their excitement by producing lava jewelry.

In addition to Europe, Egypt was also a popular destination. Ralph Huntington Blanchard was an  American collector and dealer of antiquities in Cairo, where he ran Blanchard’s Egyptian Museum. The museum was in fact a shop that sold both ancient objects and new jewelry pieces that Blanchard designed and had produced utilizing ancient fragments. The brooch above, in the form of a stylized lotus flower, features ancient blue beads in a new gold frame. It is said to have been a copy of an ancient pin that was found in the tomb of Queen Tiye. 

Image use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use.

Public Domain This object is in the Public Domain and available under a CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication

Tombstone

Ralph Huntington Blanchard (American, 1875 - 1936), designer
Blanchard’s Egyptian Museum (early to mid-1900s), retailer
Brooch, ca. 1900
Gold with chrysocolla chalcedony
Length: 11.1 cm (4 3/8 inches)
Gift of Mrs. Gustav Radeke 11.036

To request new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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