Abigail Adams' faux pearl necklace
name: label: associated person
content: Adams, Abigail
notes: label: Description
content: This faux pearl necklace belonged to Abigail Adams. In the eighteenth-century faux pearls, or “Roman pearls,” were small blown glass beads coated on the inside with a mixture of ammonia and fish scale to give them an iridescent pearl like finish. The beads were filled with wax to give them weight, but the wax sometimes melted in higher temperatures. The beads in this necklace are hollow so the wax filling may have melted at some point before they were donated to the museum. These may be the pearls depicted in the 1766 portrait of Adams painted by Benjamin Blyth.
setName: label: See more items in
content: Political History: Political History, White House/First Ladies Collection
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Susan E. Osgood
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PL.014994
label: catalog number
content: 14994
label: accession number
content: 57082
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Necklace
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: pearl, roman (overall material)