Egyptian-revival gold, sapphire, diamond and enamel bangle-bracelet, Carlo Giuliano, circa 1870

Sotheby's London, July 16, 1981, lot 290. 

Mrs. Andrew Lloyd Webber, Sotheby's London, October 7, 1993, lot 151. 

As it had been the case with Classical, Gothic, Medieval and Renaissance revivals, Egyptian art had begun to influence the decorative repertoire of the minor arts early in the 19th Century. The Napoleonic campaigns in Egypt focused European interest on that mysterious and fascinating civilization. Thomas Young’s preliminary study of the Rosetta Stone published in 1815 and Champollion’s decipherment of hieroglyphics had created the basis of Egyptology and aroused academic interest in this civilization. At the same time the Italian adventurer Giovanni Belzoni had started to popularize ancient Egyptian art by supplying European collectors and museums with Egyptian antiquities, albeit excavated with questionable and often destructive methods. Jewellers, however, did not become sensitive to this potential source of inspiration until the 1860s, and it was not until the 1867 Universal Exhibition in Paris, that jewels in Egyptian style became widely fashionable. The elements which played the most important role in the promotion of Egyptian art and of the Egyptian revival, were the publication of Auguste Mariette’s papers on his excavations in Egypt in the 1850s and the arrival at the Louvre of the archaeological treasures he had unearthed in that area. In addition, the opening of the Suez canal in 1869 brought Egypt to the forefront of worldwide news and cast new interest on Egyptomania. All forms of art and decorative arts were influenced, from sculpture and architecture to porcelain and jewellery. Ancient Egypt provided a rich source of new ideas for decorative motifs, and jewellers such as Froment Meurice, Mellerio and Boucheron in France, Castellani and Pierret in Italy and John Brogden, Robert Phillips and Carlo Giuliano in England to various degrees, fell under the spell of pharaohnic Egypt. Jewels in the shape of falcons, winged scarabs, lotus flowers, papyri and similar subjects often decorated with opaque enamel imitating the white, blue, red and green palette of Egyptian became fashionable. Faïence and hardstone cameos, sometimes antique but more often replicas were widely used. Carlo Giuliano, himself a collector of antique Egyptian scarabs, was renowned for his bracelets, brooches and necklaces incorporating antique examples or hardstone replicas. Castellani jewels in Egyptian revival style are rare but gold necklaces and bracelets in Etruscan and Hellenistic style, set with hardstone scarabs, are present in their production as from the late 1850s.