For necklaces the engravings of these same designers supply many patterns. Like the _carcan_ of the fifteenth century, they are often in the form of a band about an inch in width, composed of precious stones--rubies, emeralds, pearls, and diamonds--in open-work, or attached to velvet. They are generally constructed so as to reach only half-way round the neck, the back part being a band of black velvet. Portraits of the time frequently exhibit ropes of pearls, and finally rows of large diamonds, like the renowned _collier_ of Marie Antoinette composed by the Court jewellers Boehmer and Bossange. Numerous circumstances connected with it, too lengthy to relate here, gave to the _affaire_ of the diamond necklace a world-wide celebrity, making it one of the chief events of the century. Though historically one of the world's most famous pieces of jewellery, the necklace itself, described in quaint but vivid language by Carlyle in his _Miscellanies_, calls for no special comment, being on the whole of comparatively small artistic importance. Its value--£90,000, a great sum for those days--lay in the size and quality of the brilliants and _pendeloques_ of which it was composed. A favourite point of adornment in female attire was still the breast, where, in the first part of the century, jewelled ornaments, or _sévignés_, in the form of bows and rosettes, hung with pendants and set with table-cut stones or rose diamonds, continued to be worn. Generally they assumed the _girandole_ shape hung with pear-shaped pendants. About 1770 a large bunch of flowers, or a bouquet-shaped ornament formed of precious stones, was worn in the breast. For the latter the jeweller Lempereur enjoyed a great reputation. Upon the stiff bodice, which came into fashion at the end of the seventeenth century, scope was afforded for a goodly use of ornament, and soon we find the corsage literally covered with jewels, in a manner similar to that in which the ladies of the Renaissance almost completely covered the upper part of their dresses with pendent chain-ornaments. At the time, however, of which we now speak the ornaments are single pieces mounted upon the dress and arranged symmetrically in the form of a jewelled "stomacher" or _devant de corsage_. The Santini drawings contain many examples of this kind of open framework composed of precious stones; and several interesting designs for the same are figured on Plates 16, 17, and 18 of Maria's _Livre de Dessins de Jouaillerie et de Bijouterie_. At this period also, when luxury reached its climax, even the _panier_ or tucked-up upper skirt had the whole of its exaggerated dimensions sprinkled with pieces of jewellery, so that of this time again it may be said that the ladies of the Court displayed the whole of their wealth, and often enough of their credit too, upon a single dress.