Crystal has long been credited with magical properties. The crystal ball is, if not an indispensable, then a very desirable attribute for magical rituals, divination and divination.

In ancient times, the Greeks and Romans carved seals, vessels, and jewelry from rock crystal. Roman patricians cooled their hands with rock crystal balls in summer. Incendiary lenses were cut out of the crystals, with the help of which the priests lit the fire on the altars with “divine fire”.

In Russia, snuff boxes, buttons, seals, church utensils were cut out of rock crystal. In the Armory Chamber of the Moscow Kremlin, you can see various vessels made of rock crystal, and the most famous of them is the crystal samovar of Peter I. The Tsar liked to play tricks on the guests, pouring them vodka tinted with tea leaves from this samovar instead of tea.

Once in Europe, rock crystal was called “Arabian” or “Bohemian diamond”. Bohemia was famous for its craftsmen who created unusually beautiful works of art from rock crystal. A large collection of these masterpieces from the Habsburg treasury is kept at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

It is believed that boxes of this type were originally used to store expensive children’s linen, blessed by the Pope at the birth of a male heir in noble families. Subsequently, jewelry was stored in them or used as reliquaries.

Austrian masters of the “Viennese historicism” period, such as Hermann Ratzersdorfer and Hermann Böhm, were inspired by Renaissance masterpieces from the collections of the Saxon electors and the Habsburg treasury Kaiserliche Schatzkammer.

The famous floral arrangements of Carl Faberge’s firm were almost always set in “glasses” made of rock crystal, which created the illusion of a glass or vase filled with water.

In the middle of the 19th century, crystal skulls appeared on sale at antiquarians, which antiquities seekers passed off as pre-Columbian American artifacts, but these claims were refuted. All museums: British, Smithsonian and Paris; having a crystal skull in their collections, at different times carried out an examination of these mysterious objects and all studies agree on one thing – these are fakes. The results of the research showed that the skulls were made in the middle of the 19th century, when interest in ancient culture was high. They were made almost certainly in Europe, apparently in Germany, and quite likely in the workshops of the city of Idar-Oberstein. By that time, local sources of raw materials were depleted, and the craftsmen used imported Brazilian quartz for their work.

The theme of the crystal skull is not alien to modern masters. The famous Peruvian stone cutter Luis Alberto Quispe Aparicio created a whole gallery of crystal (and not only crystal) skulls, sometimes funny.

Today, the best rock crystal is mined in the Hot Springs region of Arkansas. It is also produced in Cumberland, Switzerland, Brazil and Madagascar. Some of the largest solid crystals have been found in Brazil.

Crystal has been used in jewelry, probably since the time when a woman tried on the first beads in the history of mankind. There is even a kind of crystal, which is valued as a precious stone. These are “marmarosh diamonds” – peculiar, transparent, very clean, with a strong brilliance of crystals. They were first discovered in 1855 in the Carpathian massif of the same name, and later in the Crimea and Yakutia. Marmarosh diamonds can be used in uncut jewelry.

Emmanuel Nobel, an oilman and engineer, the nephew of that same Alfred Nobel, had several large enterprises in Russia. He ordered several pieces of jewelry from the Faberge firm. Alma Peel’s snowflake-inspired design pleased him so much that he extended the order. Alma designed a whole series of “frosty” bracelets, pendants and brooches in platinum and diamond frames. Nobel gave these precious souvenirs to important people. This pendant was a gift from Karin Spangberg, his son Gösta’s private nurse.