As with other jewels, properly chosen bracelets can accentuate one’s attractive features, and guide the eyes swiftly and unheedingly away from less attractive ones. An appropriate and beautiful bracelet moves the attention from the hand along the wrist, following the graceful movements of the arm.
The Anklet
Anklets today are worn by exotic dancers and teenagers. In ancient times, the anklet had two distinct uses. In iron, it was the sign and token of a slave. As a jewel, it adorned a woman in her work-free hours, or a woman whose sole work was to entertain her lord and master. For this purpose, it might be of gold or of colored glass; often there dangled from the band gold medallions that tinkled or bells that gaily chimed as the wearer walked or moved in her dancing.
The second type of anklet, in the western world today, is to be seen only on the stage; even there, mainly in musical comedies with an Oriental setting. But, perhaps to counterbalance the identification bracelets worn by the young men called to the colors in the wars of this century, some of the girls they left behind have taken to wearing “slave anklets.” At first a sign of a promised waiting, these soon became a vogue, and they are still worn by some young women without thought of any binding attachment.
The usual anklet is a thin chain of links of gold, but some are interspersed with small pearls, and some have a colored stone set snug in the band, near the anklebone at each side. They should not be worn in the evening to any kind of formal affair and indeed should be discarded as soon as the teenager has grown.
CHAPTER 9
Pins, Brooches and Clips
To broach a cask of ale is to set the liquor flowing, to open the gates of good will; but the broach (and it’s still pronounced that way even when we spell it brooch) had as its purpose the closing and the holding together of the dress. In its simplest form it was an awl or a bodkin, used as a clasp or a fastener. Then came the pin with a hinge or spring at one end and a catch or loop at the other. Such safety-pin brooches, or fibulae, were common in ancient times; they were in use at least as far back as 1000 B.C., and since the third century B.C. have been developed as decorative jewels. The simple type—in the large size we call it a “blanket pin”—is still used to hold together the wrap-around Scots kilt, preserving the secret beneath.
Elaborate Pins
In medieval England the making of brooches developed as a fine art; in Kent from the sixth to the tenth century, excellent examples were made. They were mainly circulars of gold filigree adorned with garnets, though other materials, from meerschaum to paste, were also set in fine gold. However ornamental a brooch may be, it seldom quite forgets its practical function of holding a garment together. Maria Theresa of Austria, on state occasions, used an agraffe—a hook that caught in a ring, as a clasp—in which was set the Florentine diamond, a great yellow stone of over 137 carats. This was preserved in the Hofburg in Vienna until the Second World War. Even more elaborate were the great brooches the noblewomen of England wore in the decorative reign of Edward VII. Sometimes called stomachers, these masses of metal overladen with stones occupied the entire front of the dress.