Early 20th-century Boston was a hub for American Arts and Crafts metalwork and jewelry. Boston makers like Edward Everett Oakes became known for their colorful jewelry. Oakes had an especially long and successful career beginning in 1909, in the workshop of Frank Gardner Hale. In 1914, Oakes would have assisted in making similar cross necklaces in Hale’s shop for an exhibition of ecclesiastical jewelry hosted by Boston’s prestigious Society of Arts and Crafts. This necklace, made after Oakes opened his own workshop in 1918, is reversible—it features pearls on one side and amethysts on the other. The necklace, with its scrolling wirework motifs, leaves, and gems, represents the pinnacle of Boston Arts and Crafts design and features all the elements for which Oakes and the city’s other jewelry artists were known. Oakes continued to make jewelry in this style until his death in 1960. With its material connection, pearl and amethyst, the necklace closely relates to Oakes’s masterwork—a platinum and gem-set jewelry box known as a “casket”—which was completed in 1929 and added to the MFA collection in 2000.