Objects derived from noble metals were usually marked with signs, so-called features. Their appearance on goldsmith’s products, their number and significance were related to regulations issued by craftsmen’s guilds, then also by city and state authorities. These small marks with numbers and symbols in various shapes, which often remind us of cavities, are an extremely valuable source of information about the artwork. It is possible to specify several types of symbols when recognizing their elements and functions.

In the 19^th century, jewellery was worn with folk costumes both by women and men who tied a red ribbon around the shirt collar or fastened the sides of the collar with a collar stud. It was usually made of an alloy of lead, zinc and nickel (bakfon — a material made of imitation silver). The collar stud was adorned with a bead, although few men could afford real coral beads, artificial or even bread beads were used much more often.

Malachite is a mineral of the carbonate class, one of the most common minerals and it is widely spread throughout the Earth’s crust. From antiquity, it has been valued as an ornamental stone, amulet and as a medicine. Malachite has been used to produce jewellery, household goods, facing plates used for interior finishing, as well as green dyes and paints.

The exhibit comes from a rich collection of patriotic jewellery in the Chrzanów museum. Such jewellery is often called mourning jewellery as it often came from the period of national mourning that followed on Polish territory the defeat of the January Insurrection of 1863.

Marcasite is a common mineral, which is finding mainly in sedimentary rocks, like limestones, marls or clayey rocks. It belongs to the class of sulphides. Marcasite at increased temperatures undergoes irreversibly in pyrite, because it is a impermanent form of pyrite. Marcasite and pyrite are polymorphic variants of iron sulfide. It has a brass-yellow color with a greenish tinge and a metallic sheen.

The motif of decorating Jewish wedding rings with a model of a building appeared as early as the Middle Ages. The top represented either a house to be shared by a young married couple, or – as in the case of the ring presented on our website – a symbolic depiction of the Holy Temple of Jerusalem. The destruction of the Holy Temple is a recurring motif throughout the entire wedding ceremony.

The glass bead was accidently discovered during the surface research conducted in 1997 in the town of Dziewięcioły (District of Miechów, the Małopolska Province). It was made of yellow opaque glass...

The ring was purchased for the museum collection in 1998 in one of the antique shops in Sącz. According to the owner of the shop, the ring was found among other objects hidden in one of the houses in Nowy Sącz during the war. The exhibit has a great historical value, as only a few similar objects could be found in Polish museum collections.

Since 1887 the collection of the Archaeological Museum of Kraków has boasted the equipment of a rich Scythian female tomb situated under the mound of a kurgan, examined in Ryzhanovka near Zvenyhorodka in Ukraine by Gotfryd Ossowski, the first curator of the Museum of National Antiquities (from which today’s Archaeological Museum has originated) at the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Kraków.

The date of creation was engraved inside the golden hoop of the ring: 1532. The octagonal sapphire stone of the ring is decorated with Kraków’s coat of arms made in a concave relief. The ring was the symbol of the mayor’s power, and also served as a city seal. The stone needed to be made from a hard, abrasion-resistant material.