Jewelry & Vertu

Objects in this category include walking sticks, snuff boxes, decorative stone bottles and cases, eyeglass and card cases, bookmarks, thimbles and sewing kits, small plaques in various media, as well as jewelry dating from antiquity to the 20th century. Within this group the objects tend to be functional yet highly decorative and represent a wide range of media, including precious metals, precious and semiprecious stones, wood, glass, enamel, and ceramics. Many are associated with notable people or families, including the ancient Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, and the Bonaparte family. This category also contains many personal objects belonging to the Rosenbach family as well as those collected by Philip Rosenbach; this category is also highly represented within the Marianne Moore collection.

Collection Highlights

Robert Burns’s snuff mull

The engraved silver cap on this diminutive snuff horn notes that it was presented to “Robert Burns, Exciseman, Globe Tavern, Dumfries, Jan 17th, 1796.” Burns served as an exciseman from 1789 until his death in July, 1796, levying duties on the products of “victuallers, rectifiers, chandlers, tanners, tawsers, maltsters, etc.”…

Saddle watch and pedometer

The late-eighteenth-century fascination with personal scientific instruments included an interest in pedometers. This unusual model combines a watch with a saddle pedometer for counting the paces of a horse. The horse’s movement causes the watch and outer case to move up and down, forcing the chain to pull on the…

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