Beesker recommends 'Beazley Archive' as the world's
best website on Engraved Gems
ABOUT 'BEAZLEY ARCHIVE'
The
Beazley Archive
is a part of the Oxford University Classics Faculty, Oxford, England. The
main part of the Archive is the collection of Sir
John Beazley, who from 1925 to 1956 was Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art at
Oxford University. This collection was purchased by the University in 1965.
Since 1970 it has been extended through purchase and gift.
It now comprises 500,000 notes, 250,000 monochrome photographs, 33,0000
negatives, 7,000 colour prints, 2000 books and catalogues, and 50,000
impressions of engraved gems.
The Beazley Archive website contains a substantial section on Engraved Gems and
Finger-rings. The is organised into the following main parts: Styles & Periods,
Tassie Gems, Classical Phoenician Scarab Corpus, The Danicourt Collections, and
The Poniatowski Collection.
The Styles & Periods section contains sets of articles under each of the
following headings: Geometric & Early Archaic Period, Later Archaic Period,
Hellenistic Period, Classical Phoenician Scarabs, Greco-Persian Gems, Late
Antique, Early Christian & Jewish, and Etruscan Gems. The Tassie Gems are those
of James Tassie (1735-1799) who was a leading collector and merchant of
impressions of classical gems. His collection comprises 15,800 items.