By far the oldest book in our little Gray & Davis library is a copy of Knight’s Unique & Fancy Ornaments, published in London c. 1834.
In the early 1800s, Knight’s published a number of design books to be used as inspiration by craftsmen of all trades. The elaborate illustrations in Unique and Fancy Ornaments are clearly geared towards jewelers, and mostly consist of Baroque and Rococo scrollwork filled with adorable animals:
On a few of the pages, grid lines were penciled in by a jeweler looking to replicate some of Mr. Knight’s patterns.
So there you have it, a quick peek into the process of Georgian jewelry design.