ROYAL ARCH JEWELS

MASONIC jewels are more accurately medals, badges of distinction and honour, although many of the early examples were pieces of real jewellery, a few of them, indeed, being elaborate articles of virtu, heavily set with brilliants and other stones. Many of the early Royal Arch jewels are beautiful in their simplicity, especially those formed by fret‑cutting, piercing, and engraving, and jewels of this kind were made by famous silversmiths, notable among them being the Thomas Harper family of Fleet Street, London, many of whose jewels, now rare and valuable, are distinguished by the letters ‘TH,' not to be confused with the wellknown T‑over‑H device that ultimately became the triple tau.

The Masonic practice of displaying medals or ‘jewels' probably owes something to a sixteenth‑century Church custom of wearing medals, each bearing a religious emblem, or picture, incidentally a custom encouraged by various Popes during the nineteenth century.