Beautiful and useful

Above and beyond its purely decorative and symbolic character, jewellery often also serves practical purposes, namely as functional garment accessories. The earliest known decorative accessories include the belt, the fibula and the buckle. The design of these accessories is at the same time subject to prevailing developments in fashions as well as the wearer’s social status.

The origin of the belt for use in transporting goods and fastening clothing goes back to the Old Stone Age (Upper Palaeolithic). Fibulae, which, like safety pins, held garments together, were most widespread from the Bronze Age on down to the High Middle Ages. Extant examples vividly document the wide variety of forms and designs for which this jewellery genre is known. Buckles have played a special role as devices for holding accessories and clothing together since the Roman Empire.

Practical purposes are also served by clasps or wrap hooks on clothing. The agrafe also belongs to this category. This last item, a medallion-like object characteristic of the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, was used to hold clothing together and to decorate it. It was sewn or mounted either singly or in pairs on clothing.

The success story of the button is interlinked with developments in cutting techniques that promoted the advance of close-fitting garments in the fourteenth century. They needed button fasteners because snug-fitting clothing could not be pulled over the wearer’s head.

In the Renaissance pendants gained considerably in importance as constituents of personal adornment. Special pendant forms are pocket watches and pomanders, which were often intricate in design and made of precious materials. Later, the range of classic gentlemen’s accessories would include tie pins and cufflinks, along with pocket watches. Nowadays, however, they have almost entirely gone out of fashion.