Banded Agate Necklace

$180.00 at de Young Museum.

The extraordinary variety of beads on this long necklace illustrates the taste for polychromy so typical of oriental jewelry, which reached its peak during the Persian period. Craftsmen combined dozens of different stones with skillful artistry, producing contrasts in colors, materials, transparency and opacity to create a polychromatic symphony, punctuated by gold beads formed of rows of fine granules, a characteristic of the Achaemenid period. This necklace was discovered in Susa, one of the capitals of the…