Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor as Cleopa­tra in 1963

Today’s post was inspired by sev­eral sources. One was Dame Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor, whose jew­elry and cloth­ing are going up on the auc­tion block in Decem­ber. The other was color — NYFW saw bejew­eled hard­ware that min­gled, mixed, and matched with the sar­to­r­ial soft-wear on every run­way. I have a the­ory that every new sea­son is almost never really new but tweaked to the sat­isfy the cur­rent zeit­geist. Vin­tage jew­elry is a kind of cool way to stay rel­e­vant with­out toad­y­ing to the trend. Remem­ber: when it comes to jew­elry, per­sonal style is everything.

So I gave this a lit­tle bit of thought and came up with Egypt­ian Revival jew­elry. The color palette of Egyptian-inspired or repro­duced jew­elry is a blend of bold, pri­mary hues. Motifs are geo­met­ric in design (another spin-off of this is Art Deco which bor­rows from Egypt­ian, African, and Asian leit­mo­tifs). Egypt­ian Revivals hap­pened not only dur­ing the early twen­ti­eth cen­tury but also in the late eigh­teen with Napoleon’s Egypt­ian cam­paign of 1798–99 and the mid to late nine­teenth cen­tury when arche­o­log­i­cal digs pro­duced amaz­ing dis­cov­er­ies. The obelisk in Cen­tral Park in New York City also known as Cleopatra’s Nee­dle was erected in 1880. In 1922, King Tutankhamun tomb was dis­cov­ered by Howard Carter. Egyp­to­ma­nia fol­lowed. Fifty-five years later, the Cairo Museum lent fifty-five pieces from Tut’s tomb for a trav­el­ing exhibit that took the U.S. by storm.

Jew­elry from the tomb of Tutankhamun

An antique gold and enamel scarab bracelet in the Egypt­ian Revival style with mul­ti­col­ored enamel lotus leaves cen­ter­ing on a blue faience scarab, in 18k. Mar­cus & Co. United States. Kentshire Gal­leries, New York

19^th cen­tury Egypt­ian Revival brooches

c. 1970s Egyptian-inspired necklace

c. 1970s ear­rings by Hat­tie Carnegie