Jewelry

Jewelry (English jewellery) was a diverse art during the middle ages of making items that ornamented their wearer. Items could be purely decorative, or practical items to which decoration was added to create a pleasant effect, and impression of wealth.

Jewelry included items modernly thought of as jewelry:

• rings, including seal rings
• brooches including annulars, pennanulars, disk brooches
• necklaces
• pendants including decorative seals, reliquaries, and much more
• decorative pins, and also veil pins
• bracelets
• earrings

and also other items:

• horse harness pendants
• fancy jewelled belts
• jewelled trim on clothing
• fillets (head bands), torcs, circlets, crowns, coronets
• pilgrims badges

Jewelry could be made from a variety of materials:

• metal wire (gold, silver, copper, lead, alloys....)
• cast metal such as pewter
• beads from gemstones, glass, ivory, shell and coral, rock (e.g. fossils), wood or metal
• enamelling
• carved wood or ivory (sometimes covered in other objects, e.g. painted, gilded or inset with gems)
• coins or other keepsakes, e.g. a disk brooch or earring from a coin (although in some cases deliberate copies were manufactured).

Internal Links

See also:

• gemstones
• beads
• gold

External Links

References

• Greek jewelry
• Jewelry in Stefan's floregium