Ancient Roman jewellery was an essential public display of wealth. Roman jewellery at first followed the trends set by the Etruscans. As the Roman empire grew, jewellery designs and materials became even more elaborate, incorporating different cultural styles from Greece, Egypt, North Africa and the East. Earrings such as this fine example, would have been worn by straightening the pointed, gold wire through the pierced ear and then twisting it so that the earring would not open again.
Granulation (from the Latin ‘granum’ meaning ‘grain’) was a technique used by Roman jewellers to create the miniature gold spheres which adorn these hoops. It involved making tiny gold granules and then attaching them individually to the base piece. The oldest known examples made with this process date back to 2500BC and were found in the tombs of Ur, in Mesopotamia. From there, the technique spread through Near East and reached its peak with the Etruscans in the 7th-6th centuries BC.
