A pair of Giuliano earrings, £7800 at Stroud Auctions.
Arriving in the city in 1860, he worked first from a workshop on Frith Street in Soho supplying jewellery to well-known retailers, and, from 1874, a shop with retail space on Piccadilly. For 40 years, Pasquale Novissimo was the firm’s chief designer.
While the firm would perhaps become best known as a maker of Renaissance-style jewels, Giuliano’s early work focused on the fashionable archaeological revival inspired by recent finds in Etruscan burial sites. Jewels of this kind appear in the paintings of Sir Lawrence Alma- Tadema.
This pair of earrings offered by Stroud Auctions (18% buyer’s premium) in Gloucestershire are in the form of Etruscan urns or amphorae set with rubies, white enamel and split pearls.
They have Giuliano’s first maker’s mark, the CG in monogram. Hugely appealing at the estimate of just £200-400, they took a more substantial £7800 from a buyer using thesaleroom.com on March 8.
