Silk Road garb (Part 6 – Necklace)

Necklace for my Byzantine costume

After I had completed most of the Byzantine costume, I decided I really wanted to make a necklace in the style of one I saw on Pinterest. While the example is from the 7th Century, and my costume is based on an 11th Century style, I still thought the style was nice, and that I could accomplish something with the same shapes with tools I’m familiar working with.

Direct link from Pinterest

The pendant itself is way more complex than what I could make – but I was going more for the “look and feel” rather than a copy.  I started with doughnut-shaped links in a gold-tone from Fire Mountain Gems, and then also bought a large outer circle link – however it was too small to fit the doughnuts.. booo

I made the outer circle with brass wire, which I shaped around a bead container. I hammered the wire to give it a bit more texture, and make the wiring “catch” a bit better than on a smooth, round wire. I wired the doughnuts with 30 gauge gold-tone coated copper wire (also from Fire Mountain Gems) and inserted four green tourmaline rectangular-shaped beads, and in the middle one pink tourmaline bead.

I would have liked to wire in some pearls as well, but I liked the result, so opted not to go overboard to start off. I did cap off the pendant at the top with a large gold-plated bead, and rolled the heavier gauge wire to create a bail.

One example direct link from Pinterest

For the chain, I saw several Byzantine jewellery pieces that looked similar to Trichinopoly. (See them on my Pinterest page.) I decided to do a piece of Trichinopoly (Viking Knit) to suspend the pendant too. One example is also dated 6-7th Century – a match to the pendant that I was making.

I used 30 gauge gold-coloured coated copper wire to braid/knit/weave the wire into a chain. The chain on my dowel had 5 “rungs” and was 34 cm long. After passing it through my draw plate, and then through my fingers down to a width smaller than my narrowest draw-plate hole, the final result was 83 cm long. I did this in single-knit, so it’s quite fine and drape-y.

I strung the pendant onto the chain after trimming it to length, and added on two emerald green aventurine beads to either side of the pendant.

Necklace chain for my Byzantine costume

Necklace for my Byzantine costume (pendant close-up)

Necklace chain for my Byzantine costume

 

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Want to follow the rest of the posts for this project? If you don’t want to check back to see what the next step is, I’ll be auto-posting to my Facebook page Dawn’s Dress Diary. Just click “Like” to follow me there!

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Necklace displayed on the Byzantine gown