Necklace with large open-work disk and snakes' head closure, Roman, 3rd century CE (The Walters Art Museum)

A chain is a simple and yet fascinating testament to human creativity and craftsmanship. Almost meditative in its construction and form, a chain holds within it the fundamental and universal concepts of repetition, iteration, and infinity. An object of beauty in and of itself, a chain can also be used to connect and hold other jewelry components. Throughout antiquity, chains were used as to store wealth and to signify authority. For more than 4000 years, chains have served as connectors—of jewelry, of meaning, and of history.

Gold necklace on a loop-in-loop chain with a cylinder seal and smaller chains connecting multiple pendants, Greece, ca. 300 BCE (Victoria & Albert Museum)

Chains are made from one of the most basic elements of jewelry construction: wire. Although wire may seem to be a simple item, in fact it was incredibly difficult to create in ancient times. Before the invention of the steel drawplate, which enables modern jewelers to shape and lengthen wire by pulling it through successfully smaller holes, wire was made from sheet.

First, gold ingots were painstakingly beaten between stones to uniformly thin and smooth sheet. Although this was a painstaking and lengthy process, ancient goldsmiths nevertheless could create sheet thinner than human hair. Next, tiny strips of sheet were cut and rolled between two flat stones to create rolled wire with a spiral seam, similar to a paper drinking straw. Then, this arduous process must be repeated over and over, since only short lengths of wire could be produced in this way. Scholars have theorized that ancient goldsmiths may have used a hole in a bead of wood, bone, or stone as a type of early drawplate to aid the process, and to ensure that the final pieces of wire were of a consistent size or gauge. A spiral seam can be seen on a wire in the image below, three rows below the hinge.

Close up of the back of a closed clasp on a pair of wrist bracelets in the form of coiled snakes, Greek, Ptolemaic, (The J. Paul Getty Museum)

Many people would assume that the earliest handmade chains were of a simple design, with single round links connected to each other and then soldered closed. Although these types of chains have been found from ancient times, they were not very common. Due to ancient goldsmiths’ limited capacity for soldering, these types of simple chains were not very strong. In fact, they were quite literally only as strong as their weakest link. 

The earliest known chains are rather more complex constructions called loop-in-loop chains. To make these chains, each round link is first fused closed and then pinched and woven together without the use of solder. It has been theorized that this practice may have derived from fiber weaving or from working in cord or leather. Ancient woven chains use delicate and extremely fine wire, and yet, they are very strong. Each link is tightly interwoven with the ones before and after it.

Fragment of loop-in-loop chain, Middle Kingdom, Egypt, ca. 1981–1802 BCE (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Across centuries and cultures, many variations on the loop-in-loop chain were made, from a single row of woven links to links woven in multiple directions (called double, quadruple, or sextuple loop-in-loop chains). Later in the Etruscan, Hellenistic, and Roman periods even more complex chains were made of multiple loop-in-loop chains that are themselves woven together, called strap chains. Estimates suggest that a typical Hellenistic-era Greek loop-in-loop chain necklace would use up to 75 feet of gold wire, while a strap chain necklace would use more than twice as much, perhaps up to 165 feet.

Gold loop-in-loop chain, Roman (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Strap chain with one decorated terminal preserved, Ptolemaic Period, Egypt, 332–30 BCE (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

The earliest loop-in-loop chains ever found are from ancient Mesopotamia, excavated from the Royal Cemeteries of Ur dating to approximately 2500 BCE. However, as several jewelry historians have pointed out, the complexity of these chains and the skill with which they were produced indicates they had been made for quite some time before then.

Gold wire chain, Ur, 2600-2450 BCE (Penn Museum)

Another variation of the single loop-in-loop chain is sometimes called a pinched loop chain or double figure-of-eight chain. This chain is made in the same way as the loop-in-loop chains above, however the links are pinched into a figure-of-eight shape before weaving into chain.

Gold chain with central ‘Herakles Knot’ and decorative elements in cornelian and glass, Thessaly, Greece, ca. 2nd century BCE (Benaki Museum of Greek Civilization)

As soldering techniques became more advanced, variations on the simple link chain began to appear with more regularity, including this figure-of-eight style chain popular across the ancient Roman Empire. Several examples have been found in and around Pompeii, many with lunula or crescent-shaped pendants as shown in this example.

Necklace chain, Roman, 1st century CE (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Chains were an essential component of ancient jewelry, despite the significant amount of time, skill, and gold required. Handwoven chains remain particularly time intensive to make even today, as the gold is alloyed, wire is drawn down to size, and each link is formed and connected to the desired length. Although modern machine-made chains can be constructed much more quickly and with complete uniformity, none can compare to the beauty of a chain in which each and every link is shaped by the hand of a practicing goldsmith.