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Just over a century after the “world’s most important” hoard of Elizabethan jewellery was discovered by chance in a cellar in London, experts have uncovered important information that may lead to unravelling the mystery of who put it there and why.
The collection of 500 pieces of jewellery, which is being brought together for the first time by the Museum of London, may have been hidden by goldsmiths heading off to fight in the Civil War which started in 1642 or fleeing the conflict abroad. It also links the treasure trove to an individual for the first time.
Hazel Forsyth, curator of the exhibition The Cheapside Hoard: London’s Lost Jewels “The intrigue surrounding this whole collection is who buried it, when and why it was buried and what it signified. Pinning down the date helps in pinning down possibly who might have put it together and speculating on what prompted them to do that.”
She continued: “There’s a lot of scope for research, and I hope the exhibition will prove a catalyst to launch it on the international stage, and get scholars from around the world - where the gems came from - working on it. Perhaps we will get further towards answering some of the more tricky questions.”
The discovery of a gemstone dubbed the “Stafford intaglio” has allowed experts to date the hoard for the first time. The gem, engraved with the heraldic badge of William Howard,with Wholesale Cheap Custom Keychain and promotional key tags. the only Viscount Stafford, narrows the date down to between 1640 and 1666.
While he may not have buried the treasure, the jeweller may well have bought up some of the family’s collection.
Ms Forsyth said: “It is regarded as the single most important find of its type in the world.” The find,Full service promotional company specializing in Custom USB flash drives. which includes necklaces, rings, Byzantine cameos and a one-of-a-kind emerald watch from Columbia, has since led to documentary research uncovering much more about the people who lived in the properties where the hoard was found.
“They were all practising jewellers and goldsmiths,” Ms Forsyth said.Plastic Card manufacturers directory trade platform for China plastic card manufacturers. “The likelihood is they buried it below the cellar floor because, simply that was safest thing to do.”
“One possibility is the civil war. A large number of goldsmiths and jewellers went to be soldiers and the trade was severely affected,” she said, adding others would have gone abroad.
Something must have happened to the person who buried the hoard, as they never came back for it: “Their secret perished with them.” While the buildings were destroyed by the Great Fire of London, the cellars survived.
“The gem material comes from all over the world and underlines London’s international trade network which was very sophisticated,” Ms Forsyth said.
“The hoard also shows us the technical skills and styles of cutting we’re not really able to reproduce today. Partly because of the gem material they had available but also the years of handed down knowledge and tradition.”
The hoard was found in 1912 after workmen demolished a series of buildings in Cheapside, London. The area in the 17th century was known for its jewellery shops.Shop the best selection of men's stainless steel bracelet manufacturer.
The workmen hid the treasures in their pockets, handkerchiefs and caps and took it to a man called Stoney Jack. He “literally went on a pub crawl offering the work men a shilling or half a pint. It was the best thing he had ever found in investigating London,” Ms Forsyth said. Lord Harcourt,Sensormatic branded Custom hard tags and detection systems retail for double. a founder of the London Museum, instructed him to buy the workers out.

Members of a gang who fleeced leading auction houses and car dealerships in the UK out of nearly ￡750,000 worth of jewellery, watches and car parts were today jailed for up to six years.Our top picks for the Best Iphone Headset and gear,
Simohamed Rahmoun, 31,the heavily discounted fare for China IC card holders. Farouk Dougui, 40, and Jabey Bathurst, 25, were sentenced at Isleworth Crown Court in west London for their role in using stolen credit cards and false identities to obtain luxury goods from firms, including Bonhams, Christie's and Gardiner Houlgate in Corsham, during the seven-month scam in 2010.
Judge Phillip Matthews jailed Rahmoun - who contacted auction houses using bogus names - for six years in prison,Find Best Feather Patch artificial flower arrangements www.girlstrims.com, describing his role as a "driving force" behind the conspiracy.
French-born Dougui, whose roles including acting as a chauffeur for Bathurst who collected the stolen items, was jailed for five years and a further two months for breaching a restraint order freezing his assets.
Bathurst, 25, who the court heard was paid ￡50 for every collection he made of stolen goods, was jailed for four years.
The sentencing hearing comes after Dougui,We are always offering best quality stainless steel bracelet supplier the affordable price. of Charlton Park Road, south east London and Bathurst, of Brook Close, Ruislip, Middlesex, were found guilty of two charges of conspiracy to defraud by a jury following a trial at Isleworth Crown Court earlier this year.
Rahmoun, of Stile Hall Mansions, Wellesley Road, Chiswick, west London, had pleaded guilty to the same charges during the six-week trial.
The gang used credit card details stolen from people in Canada and the US to use false names to register with auction houses as telephone bidders.
A nationwide investigation led by Wiltshire Police found 43 companies across the UK were conned in the fraud between April and November 2010.
Prosecutors said Rahmoun and Dougui would contact auction houses and show an interest in expensive lots. The items they successfully bid for were picked up by Bathurst, who used a false name.
Dougui had four previous convictions for five offences, including one of dishonesty, dating back to 1999 for a "minor railway offence," James Bromige, prosecuting, told the sentencing hearing.
Rahmoun had 28 previous convictions for 49 offences, including 17 for theft and similar offences and five for fraud and other similar charges.
These included a six-month prison sentence in 2005 for obtaining services by deception and a three-year jail sentence in 2006 for a series of burglaries, he said. Bathurst had two previous convictions for three offences, he said, none relating to dishonesty, but he had one caution for theft in 2006.
In one of the frauds, two diamond rings, a diamond chain, and a tank watch worth ￡53,690, were successfully bid for at a Christie's sale in London on June 9 2010 using the false name Philip Smith, the court was told.
Payments were made over the phone the next day using details from seven different credit cards, the court heard.
The court heard the fraudsters targeted auctions across the country including Northumbria, Shrewsbury, Birmingham, Derby and Wiltshire.
The court heard that "not one" piece of jewellery has been recovered from the scam.
Judge Matthews, addressing Rahmoun, said: "In my judgment, you were the driving force behind the conspiracies. It was your role with the auction houses and the jewellers and the other retail establishments in registering your interest and presenting credit card details for card holders other than yourself which lay at the heart of the conspiracies for these offences.
"You were rarely deterred, when a credit card was rejected for any reason, you would produce details for another.
"That took in my judgment, some nerve, particularly when you were dealing with some of the leading auction houses in the world."
Roger Carne, for Dougui, said his client was born in France and had served in the French Foreign Legion and as a boxer. He said Dougui had come to the UK around 12 years ago,keep tabs on your hair and makeup with this easy-to-pack Pocket Mirror in pretty prints. and had traded at two markets as well as opening his own hairdressing shop.
"He lived an honest and industrious life until he was tempted into these matters in 2010," he told the court.
John Aspinwall QC, for Rahmoun, described his client as "by and large" a petty criminal. He denied that his client was a man of "great wealth."
Mohammed Ally, for Bathurst, said he was was an "employee" in relation to the two other men.
"He was employed to collect and bring back the items .. he can be seen as very much on the periphery of these conspiracies," he said.
Barbara Goossens, 61, of Dudley Court, Upper Berkeley Street, central London, who was charged with one count of conspiracy to defraud, was acquitted by the jury.

For Munir Alkaloti, it all started with the Abu Dhabi oil rush in the early 1960s. As the world’s leading oil companies descended on the Gulf emirate, their waste became another man’s treasure.
Mr Alkaloti, newly arrived from Jordan and with a mind for business, started to clear the yards for those oil majors – feasting on an abundance of scrap metal. The rule was simple, if the magnet in his pocket did not attract it, then it was worth money.
Beyond the yards, he even plundered an old shipwreck, shored on the beach of Abu Dhabi. “I was checking on the walls of the captain’s room and it didn’t catch the magnet, so I told the guys ‘let’s take the whole wall out,’ – it turned out to be [highly valuable] cupronickel.”
Now the Dubai-based Kaloti Jewellery Group claims to be one of the world’s largest gold and precious metals refiners and trading houses. Having begun life in the United Arab Emirates before company registration had even been introduced in the UAE, it’s now a driver of the emirate’s increasing share in the global refining market.
Kaloti’s growth has been fast. It was only after the return of Mr Alkaloti’s nephew,Our top picks for the Best Iphone Headset and gear, who had studied the art of refining of gold in Italy, that the company took to refining. When it first started, the special machine they used produced just 8 kilograms of gold a day.
By that time Mr Alkaloti had moved to Dubai and by the mid-1990s the family already ran the biggest jewellery factory in the UAE. It was only then “when we start noticing lots of traders from outside Dubai coming in, carrying raw gold asking people if they can buy this kind of product.”
The gold came from mines in Africa. and north Africa. Banks from Europe also started to come in with the same idea, buying impure gold and looking for buyers. Mr Alkaloti saw the opportunity and ran with it.
While most companies suffered in Dubai during the global financial crisis gold was one of the biggest winners. “When there are crashes people go to gold as a reserve,” says Mr Alkaloti.
However, some of his customers did suffer and that had an impact on him. As popular tangible assets, some of his clients had exposure to both gold and real estate and when the property crisis hit in Dubai some delayed their payments.
One of those who allegedly skipped payment on about $60m has yet to be found while the trial against him continues in the UAE.
“That kind of thing happened during the crash, because of the real estate, not because of the gold. Gold was booming,Find Best Feather Patch artificial flower arrangements www.girlstrims.com,” recalls Mr Alkaloti.
Conversely,the heavily discounted fare for China IC card holders. it is the world pulling itself out of economic doom and gloom that may keep Mr Alkaloti awake at night.
While demand for jewellery has remained strong, institutional investors have been selling gold exchange traded funds since late last year. Gold demand was down 13 per cent in the first three months of the year, according to the World Gold Council. Buying of jewellery and coins has provided support for gold but analysts question how long the physical purchases will last.
Tom Kendall, precious metals strategist at Credit Suisse in London, said that a prolonged fall in gold prices would put pressure on refiners. “If you think, as we do, that this is more than a temporary blip in the 12-year bull market, then you’re likely to see mine supply contract, in which case there’s going to be too much refining capacity,” he says. “That suggests there will be a squeeze on margins across the whole business.”
Kaloti hopes to build on demand from India and China, as it sits in Dubai,We are always offering best quality stainless steel bracelet supplier the affordable price. accessible to both. According to the World Gold Council,keep tabs on your hair and makeup with this easy-to-pack Pocket Mirror in pretty prints. Chinese demand rose 20 per cent in the first quarter, boosted by a 19 per cent rise in jewellery demand. In India, purchases increased 27 per cent, with demand up 15 per cent.
The company is building a new $60m refinery in Dubai – the biggest in the Middle East – that will have a capacity to produce up to 1,400 tons of gold and 600 tons of silver and other precious metals, tripling the size of Kaloti’s refining production.
The new plant will use both electrolysis technology for the highest quality gold and the more traditional aqua regia process for less pure gold refining.
Switzerland, home to companies such as Metalor Technologies, Pamp, Valcambi and Argor-Heraeus, remains the heart of the world’s refining markets. Other large refiners are based in South Africa, Germany, the UK and Japan.

Paige Pickering is strong enough now, and you’ll find her Sunshine Girl picture and her story on page 28.
It’s a remarkable story of courage and the inner strength so many survivors possess, but it’s also more than that.
It’s about the importance of family and their support.
It’s about the importance of community and the amazing support from that source.
Paige Pickering was born with cerebral palsy and then she was diagnosed with cancer.
She survived the removal of a brain tumour and survived the removal of another tumour — a seven-pounder — from her abdomen.
Paige and her parents and two brothers prepared for the worst, and with good reason, there seemed to be no hope.
Medical people told her parents their 18-year-old daughter would likely be a vegetable the rest of her life. They were told she would certainly never walk again.
Two weeks ago she was a proud member of the graduating class at Cochrane High.
Two weeks ago she walked on the stage and received her diploma.
Two weeks ago she wrote a speech for her graduating class and had a friend read it.
She related her challenges and she related her gratitude, and when her friend finished reading Paige’s words there wasn’t dry eye in the crowd of 1,000 and there was an instant standing ovation.
She did four rounds of chemo and overcame a major challenge for any teenage girl — she lost her hair.
That was made easier when her father and two brothers also shaved their heads in support.
Her cancer is in remission now and has been for 15 months and we all can be grateful for that.
Paige tells of her experience when she met Avril Lavigne, which became a day she will never forget.
One month after the very positive experience with Lavigne, she was diagnosed with stage three ovarian cancer.
Two days after that another surgery to remove the seven-pound tumour.
She did four rounds of chemo that made her so weak she didn’t even want to get out of bed.
Like Shawn Fraser, who is an ordinary Cochranite who saw a need for the Pickering family and last Christmas worked his butt off getting donations and helping the family in so many ways.
But it’s a story of a teenage girl who simply wouldn’t and didn’t quit.
Where many lesser mortals would have surrendered to the inevitable, Paige dug in her heels and fought on.
Read her story and read about her ‘bead’ journey.
Read how she measured her journey in beads and you will be astounded at the number.
The next time you hear someone criticizing today’s youth tell them Paige Pickering’s remarkable story.
Tell them about this teenage girl who has this incredible number of beads and how she came to get them.
Tell them about this kid who showed we adults how important it is to believe in yourself and never quit.
Our first and only Sunshine Girl couldn’t be a better choice. This is a Cochrane kid. She’s one of us. This is her home. This is her community.

Five years after the global financial crisis, South Korean construction workers are feeling the pinch more than ever as they shoulder a mountain of debt from a real estate bust that has cast a long shadow on the country's growth prospects.
"There was pressure. There's nowhere else in the world where there's a parallel to these practices," said a construction worker, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.
A public relations official at Poonglim, which completed its court receivership in April, would only say employees had taken loans on behalf of the company and interest payments were being paid by Poonglim. "We are in discussions with debt creditors to resell all of these apartments with discounts to resolve the matter," he said.
Hit by debt and the prolonged property market slump, January-March private consumption fell for the first time in five quarters as Koreans kept a tight hold on their wallets.
Other data also indicates the economy once dubbed the "Miracle on the Han River" because of its rise from poverty to rich nation status in just one generation may be drying up.
Gross domestic product grew 2 percent in 2012 and the Bank of Korea has forecast expansion of 2.6 percent this year.
President Park Geun-hye, who took office in February, has implemented a household debt relief programme. But the 800 billion won put into the scheme is far less than the 18 trillion won that she promised in her election campaign.
The original proposal for what Park dubbed the "National Happiness Fund" was to provide debt relief for 3.2 million people, but the smaller amount will see just 324,000 qualify.
Park, the daughter of Park Chung-hee, the autocratic ruler who oversaw South Korea's stellar industrialisation in the 1960s and 1970s, pledged an "Era of People's Happiness" in her campaign.
Park Wong-gap, a property specialist at South Korea's Kookmin Bank, described the measures as "morphine" for a sick body, and would not solve fundamental problems of a weak domestic economy.
An office worker at Byucksan Engineering & Construction Co Ltd, Kim Keon-hoon said he was also pushed in 2008 to buy an unsold 800 million won two-bathroom, four-bedroom apartment in the Ilsan suburb outside Seoul as his employer teetered on the edge of bankruptcy.
Mortgages are commonly taken on by workers to provide cash-strapped companies with liquidity, and interest payments are usually shouldered by the firms.
The purchase has saddled the father of two with debts of 500 million won and monthly interest payments of 3 million won that he cannot repay. Kim and other employees say they were coerced to buy and have taken the company to court.
This was the second time Kim had been pushed by his company into buying an unsold apartment, the first was during the 1998 Asian financial crisis, still known as the International Monetary Fund crisis in South Korea.
"During the IMF crisis, many companies raised money by making their employees buy apartments ... so when the company proposed that we do it again, it wasn't the kind of atmosphere where anyone could object," Kim told Reuters in the dusty shell of an apartment in a high-rise block on the edge of Seoul. He took on a mortgage for fear his career would suffer.
When asked about workers' claims that they were forced to buy unsold properties, a Byucksan official said the company was sympathetic to the plight of its staff. "That was a practice in the past and it can now only be resolved by reselling them. There is nothing we can do to manage the problem as the company is still under receivership."
The Korean Federation of Construction Company Unions, an umbrella union grouping, estimated in February that members working for five firms placed in receivership had been told to buy a total of 1,047 unsold apartments from their employers worth a total of 454 billion won.
"We know our workers are in pain and we all hope these houses will be sold again soon so we can get rid of that pain," said the official at Byucksan, who requested anonymity as he is not authorised to speak to the media.
Due to oversupply and lack of affordability, apartment prices in the Seoul metropolitan area have fallen 14.7 percent to end-2012 from July 2008, according to Moody's Investors Service. The slump is killing off builders.
"There is a structural problem and another liquidity crisis could happen any time to construction companies unless the real estate market recovers," said Kookmin Bank's Park.
Kookmin's own data shows that house prices fell by their fastest annual level in four years in April with a 0.76 percent decline. The bank's data is considered an official indicator of South Korea's housing market conditions.
Combined first-quarter operating losses at the top nine South Korean construction firms, including giants such as Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co Ltd and Samsung C&T Corp, were 480.9 billion won, a compilation by online financial news service FnGuide showed.
Among the top 100 builders in South Korea, 21 firms including Ssangyong Engineering & Construction Co Ltd and Kumho Industrial Co Ltd are under court receivership or debt-restructuring programmes, according to the Construction Association of Korea.
Until the construction sector revives, some parts of the industry are likely to put pressure on employees to buy, banking on the same spirit of self-sacrifice that saw people sell their jewellery to help the government pay back a $57 billion loan from the IMF during the Asian crisis in the 1990s.
The 44-year-old Kim, still with Byucksan and living in a smaller apartment in the same town, is struggling to raise and educate a family under the weight of huge debts that have destroyed his lifetime savings.

GOING on a shopping spree with RM1 million is beyond one's wildest dream for most people.
Yusof threw caution to the wind as he spent lavishly at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) after being declared the winner at a prize presentation ceremony at KLIA recently. Malaysia Airports also announced the final group of six Indulger prize winners in the monthly draw of its ITUF campaign.
The grand prize was presented by Malaysia Airports chairman Tan Sri Dr Wan Abdul Aziz Wan Abdullah, while Indulger prize winners received their prizes from senior general manager of operation services for Malaysia Airports Datuk Azmi Murad and senior general manager of commercial services for Malaysia Airports Faizah Khairuddin.
"The Indulge Till you Fly campaign is an annual event aimed at giving travellers and visitors options and opportunities to indulge themselves and be rewarded handsomely. It underpins our strategic move to raise awareness that airports are lifestyle destinations with lots to offer, sometimes, more so than downtown malls," said Faizah.
"This year's ITUF, offering its RM1 million shopping spree, is our biggest reward yet for a traveller to or from Malaysia," she said .
The campaign was held from July 19 last year to Feb 28 this year, at all the international airports in Malaysia, namely KLIA / LCCT-KLIA, Penang International Airport , Langkawi International Airport, Kuching International Airport and Kota Kinabalu International Airport.
"Taking last year's campaign as a benchmark, we recorded a 57 per cent increase in the number of entries received, 134 per cent increase in total sales and a 50 per cent increase in average spending per passenger," said Faizah .
To take part in the campaign, travellers had to spend a minimum of RM250 at any participating F&B or retail outlet at the five international airports which also entitled them to shopping vouchers worth RM10.
Those eligible used the Indulge and Win e-kiosks to take part in the contest and redeemed their on-the-spot shopping vouchers by scanning the receipts of their purchases and passport details and answering campaign-related questions.
Monthly, six Indulger prize winners were given RM10,000 each in shopping vouchers. The grand prize winner and the monthly winners were selected randomly by an off-site computer.
Dressed in smart white checked shirt and grey sweater, you'd hardly know Isaac ole Tialolo is Maasai.
The large round holes in his ears - where his jewellery sometimes sits - might be a clue, though.
Isaac is a Maasai leader and elder. Back home in the mountains near Naivasha, in southern Kenya, he lives a semi-nomadic life, herding sheep, goats, and - mostly importantly - cattle.
But Isaac is also chair of a new organisation, the Maasai Intellectual Property Initiative, and it's a project that's beginning to take him around the world - including, most recently, London.
People need to understand the culture of the others and respect it”
"We all know that we have been exploited by people who just come around, take our pictures and benefit from it," he says.
"We have been exploited by so many things you cannot imagine."
Crunch time for Isaac came about 20 years ago, when a tourist took a photo of him, without asking permission - something the Maasai, are particularly sensitive about.
"We believed that if somebody takes your photograph, he has already taken your blood," he explains.
Isaac was so furious that he smashed the tourist's camera.
Twenty years later, he is mild-mannered and impeccably turned out - but equally passionate about what he sees as the use, and abuse, of his culture.
"I think people need to understand the culture of the others and respect it," he says.
"You should not use it to your own benefit, leaving the community - or the owner of the culture - without anything."
"If you just take what belongs to somebody, and go and display it and have your fortune, then it is very wrong. It is very wrong," he says.

A group of six to seven armed robbers allegedly held a family hostage in Kalka in the wee hours of Monday, assaulted the members and injured one of them, before they decamped with Rs 20,000 and jewellery.
According to police officials, around 3 am, the gang of robbers entered the house of Bachan Singh, a retired government employee, at Bharat Nagar in Kalka, and held guns and knives at the family members. The jewellery that was looted were gold rings, bangles and bracelets, police said. Official added that when the family members raised an alarm, they fired a gunshot in the air.
The police have launched a manhunt for the accused. Panchkula-Ambala range commissioner of police and a special team of Crime Investigation Agency (CIA) have been asked to carry out investigation. "It seems the handiwork of some local people. I have asked the CIA team to probe the case,'' he said.
According to police officials, the miscreants, who were masked, managed to loot the valuables in 30 minutes. Police officials added that the robbers assaulted Bachan Singh's wife, after she refused to hand over the keys of the drawer in which the jewellery was kept. "As she raised an alarm, her son, Deepinder Singh, tried to resist the robbers. In the scuffle, he sustained injuries on his hand and thigh. After the thieves managed to take away the valuables, Deepinder followed them outside. But, the accused fired a shot in the air before fleeing," police said.
Officials added that the robbers had come on foot. At the time of the incident, besides Bachan Singh, his wife and son and daughter-in-law were present, a senior police official said.
Gujarat, which accounts for about a quarter of India's total exports, is mulling a five-year export policy to focus on value-added exports in sectors such as textiles, agriculture and dairy.
The move by the top exporting state in the country comes on the back of sagging efforts by the centre to boost dwindling exports.
The first state in the country to have an export policy, Gujarat plans to increase the share of exports from the state from 25% to 30% in five years.
As a precursor to the policy, the Federation of Indian Exports Organization undertook a study for Gujarat on the state's export competitiveness and identified sectors with export potential.
"We are working on improving exports from the state and will take steps to increase the share to 35% of total India's exports by 2020," said a state government official.
The government may announce incentives ranging from exemption from value-added tax (VAT) in some sectors to focus market scheme and focus product scheme to offset high freight cost and other externalities to select international markets and promote products with high-export intensity.
India's overall exports declined by 1.76% in 2012-13 to $300.6 billion, as demand in the US and the EU subsided on slowing economy. Following this the centre announced a series of incentives in the annual supplement of the foreign trade policy. "Centre's policies cannot be so specific, whereas the state policies are made as per the needs of the state. So you need such simultaneous policies," said Manoj Pant, professor, JNU.
As of now, it has been supplying domestic and international markets with raw materials but with proper R&D and focused investments, Gujarat should introduce high value-added products of global standards. Only a quarter of export units have an export house or upward status for special benefits, the FIEO study noted.