JEWELRY

JEWELRY. Until about the mid-eighteenth century, both men and women wore significant quantities of jewelry. Sixteenth-century portraits, for example of Robert Dudley, show men wearing the popular hat badges (enseignes) and pins (agraffes), an occasional earring, gold chains, often adorned with pendants or lockets, and several rings. Women could wear such pieces in even greater quantity, pinning pendants to their sleeves and starched collars and into their hairdos as well as layering shorter and longer necklaces. While certain types were gender-specific—jeweled daggers and sword hilts for men, pairs of bracelets, girdles, and marten or sable pelts with jeweled heads for women—the earlier period stands out for the types and designs they had in common. The clothing of both sexes was adorned with rows of pearls, stoneset rosettes, pairs of tassel-like aglets, or larger sets of small jewels sewn onto fabric, indicating jewelry's close connection to costume and fashion.

In the course of the eighteenth century, as men's fashion grew simpler, their jewelry was reduced to buttons, buckles, rings, and, occasionally, medals, hat jewels, and ceremonial weapons. Women wore quantities of pearls dangling from their ears and in necklaces, elaborate pins or bodice jewels (stomachers), and hair jewelry, as forms of jewelry became increasingly specialized and gendered. The quantity and quality of jewelry denoted status, yet the frequency and repetitiveness of sumptuary laws mainly proves how ineffectual such regulations were. The most expensive and elaborate jewels belonged to monarchs and the high nobility, who, however, did not hesitate to pawn them for money when necessary. Displaying fabulous jewels at ceremonial or special public occasions was required to maintain rank and standing among their peers and in the eyes of the general public. The rising merchant class and bourgeoisie developed their own, only slightly less elaborate, versions; basically, everyone wore similar forms of jewelry, but in lesser materials according to what one could afford. Costume jewelry, which always existed but does not survive in quantity from earlier periods, became a more widespread alternative during the eighteenth century. As manufacturing techniques advanced, so did the use of glass paste, rhinestones, gilt silver and brass, and prefabricated, stamped, or other types of hollow jewelry worn by larger segments of the population.

Important jewelry-making centers existed in all the major trade and court cities of Europe. There was such a great exchange of objects, artists, and designs that attributions to individuals, and even to particular regions, are often impossible to determine. Stylistically, the early modern period saw a fundamental transition around 1600 from narrative and colorful gold and enamel jewelry to more monochromatic, abstract, and often geometric, forms. Such designs were driven by an emphasis on glittering rows of faceted stones as gem-cutting techniques advanced and greater quantities of stones, especially diamonds and pearls, became available. The pendant, perhaps the most popular Renaissance jewel, displayed a range of subjects, from religion and mythology to miniature portraits, while the characteristic motifs of later centuries focused on large glittering rosettes, sets of graduated bows, or stylized plant forms.

See also Aristocracy and Gentry ; Bourgeoisie ; Class, Status, and Order ; Clothing ; Diamond Necklace, Affair of ; Sumptuary Laws ; Technology ; Women .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bury, Shirley. Jewellery, 1789–1910: The International Era. Woodbridge, U.K., 1991.

Cocks, Anna Somers, ed. Princely Magnificence: Court Jewels of the Renaissance, 1500–1630. Exh. cat. London, 1980.

Een eeuw van schittering: Diamantjuwelen uit de 17de eeuw = A Sparkling Age: 17th-Century Diamond Jewellery. Exh. cat. Antwerp, 1993.

Stefanie Walker