Classical Jewellery of the Greeks and Romans is of gold or silver, ornamented with filigree and granulation, Colour is introduced by hardstone cameos and intaglios and, from the late Hellenistic and Roman periods, by bright emeralds and garnets. Imperial coins in openwork settings are an addition made by the Roman jewellers. The motifs, which are taken from architecture and from nature -fruit, flowers, leaves, human and animal forms- are composed into symmetrical designs with a degree of skill that modern craftsmen, not even the Castellani, could never surpass.
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