Jewels constitute an essential part of popular clothing; their presence connotes festive and ceremonial clothing and their absence connotes daily clothing. As with clothing, for goldsmithery, we are faced with a wide variety of artifacts, a greater or lesser number and wealth of them in the same center depending on the different social classes and a presence of non-Sardinian artifacts compared to those of local artisanal production in relation to the greater or lesser exposure of the different regions of the island.

The most commonly used metal is silver, which is abundantly present on the island unlike gold, which, although present, was in smaller quantities. In fact, in Sardinia, gold was extracted, until the beginning of the twentieth century, near Lula, from a small mine that was later abandoned when mining became uneconomic, and around Montevecchio, near Guspini. The existence of gold in the Montevecchio mine has led us to believe that many of the goldsmithery artifacts in the necropolises of Nora and Tharros were produced with the metal of Montevecchio.
On the other hand, silver, in the form of galena, is much more abundant on the island, with deposits located along the northwestern part of the island and in the Iglesiente. It is probably worth looking for the abundance of this mineral as the reason for the prevalence in Sardinia of silver artifacts compared to gold, together with the fact that the powerful blacksmith corporations into which the “argenters” converged (the first documented Statutes date back to the 17th century) required most of the silver extracted on the island for their business and had established important artisanal production centers in Cagliari, Iglesias, Oristano, Bosa, Alghero and Sassari.

Red coral is also widely used in popular jewelry. Abundant along the coast of the island with particularly rich banks along the western and northern coasts, in the past, it was “fished” with the traditional system of ingenuity, mainly by boats coming from the peninsula. Sardinian coral, very valuable, is dark red in color and is still used today to make pendants for earrings, necklaces and cameos: until not long ago, most of the coral caught in the Sardinian seas was processed outside the island and returned to Sardinia as a semi-finished or finished product.
Both gold and silver filigree are massively present, which, together with the granulation technique, constitute one of the most important aspects of Sardinian jewelry with a very wide range of techniques and applications.
In addition to the precious materials typical of goldsmithery in general, there is a very wide range of other non-noble materials, both local and imported, in the traditional production of Sardinia, such as mother-of-pearl, various stones, rarely precious, more often semiprecious, obsidian, flint, marble, wood, glass pulp and finally shells and operculums of marine gastropods (eye of Saint Lucia).
The main jewels associated with popular clothing are represented by gold or silver buttons in foil or filigree, by earrings of a wide variety of types, by gold and coral necklaces with or without pendants, by chains, belts or chins in silver, by rosaries, by brooches, clips and pendants and finally by amulets.
The largest collection of jewels in Sardinia is kept in the Museum of Popular Life and Traditions in Nuoro. Other important collections are in the “G. A. Sanna” National Museum in Sassari, in the National Art Gallery of Cagliari, in the National Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions in Rome, in the “Luigi Cocco” Collection of the Autonomous Region of Sardinia, Cagliari.

Bibliography by
M.L. Wagner, “The Evil Eye and Related Beliefs in Sardinia”, in Lares. Bulletin of the Italian Ethnographic Society, V, 2, 1913;
A. Tavera, “Popular goldsmithery”, in Sardinia. Encyclopedia, edited by M. Brigaglia, II, Cagliari, 1982;
The precious ornament. A collection of popular Italian goldsmithery at the beginning of the century, Rome, 1986;
P. Corrias Dessì, “The traditional jewelry of Sardinia”, in Studi Sardi, XXVII, 1986-87, pp. 387-398;
C. Alarcon Roman, Catalogue of amulets of the Museo del Pueblo Español. Madrid, 1987;
The Ethnographic Museum of Nuoro, curated by P. Piquereddu, Sassari-Milan, Banco di Sardegna, 1987; P. Corrias Dessì, “The Jewels”, in the National Art Gallery of Cagliari — Catalogue, II, Cagliari, 1990, pp. 219-226; P. Gometz, Jewels of Sardinia.
Tradizione arte magica, Cagliari, 1995;
The precious ornaments of the Sardinians, curated by M. Atzori, Sassari, 2000;
A. Gandolfi, Amulets, magic ornaments of Abruzzo, Pescara, 2003; Jewels.
History, language, religiosity of ornament in Sardinia, Nuoro, Ilisso, 2004