Brooch

Ornament That Can Also Fasten

A brooch is jewellery with a job. It is a decorative item designed to be attached to garments, pinned through or clipped to cloth so that it is worn on the clothing rather than directly on the body like a ring or a necklace. Most brooches are made of metal, often silver or gold but sometimes bronze or some other material, and they are frequently decorated with enamel or with gemstones. Some are solely for ornament, worn to catch light and mark a place on a dress, coat or cloak, while others serve a practical function as a fastening, perhaps holding a cloak closed. That double nature, decoration and clasp in one object, runs through the whole history of the form, and it is the first thing to check when identifying one: a brooch has a face meant to be seen and a pin or catch on the back meant to secure it.

The history is long. The earliest known brooches are from the Bronze Age, and because fashions in brooches changed rather fast, they are important chronological indicators: a change in shape or decoration can help place a garment, a burial or a settlement in time. Few jewellery forms offer that combination of survival and change. Metal endures in the ground where cloth rots away, yet brooch styles turned over quickly enough that a surviving example carries dating information. A brooch is therefore never only a pretty object in an archaeological or museum setting; its form is evidence, and collectors and historians read its outline, its pin mechanism and its decoration together.

The Fibula, and Hair and Portrait Brooches

In ancient times the brooch was known as a fibula. The fibula was an ornamental clasp used by Romans, Greeks, Germanic peoples, and also by Celts and migratory tribes in Europe from the Early Bronze Age, in use as late as 800 AD in some places. Fibulae were shaped somewhat like a large safety pin and were used to hold clothing together, in an age when draped garments needed a strong clasp rather than buttons. They came in many varieties and held prominent significance for the identity of the wearer, indicating ethnicity and class; elaborately designed fibulae were an important part of Late Antique dress, and simpler ones were part of Roman military equipment. Because the same types can be found on both sides of the Roman frontier, among Roman and barbarian populations alike, fibulae show how elite objects signalling status moved and were adopted across cultures.

A later chapter is more personal. From the eighteenth century through the Victorian era it was fashionable to incorporate hair and portraiture into a brooch. The practice began as an expression of mourning, then expanded to keepsakes of loved ones who were living. Human hair was encased within the brooch or braided and woven into a band to which clasps were affixed, and miniature brooch portraits sometimes incorporated ground human hair as pigment. Two-sided swivel brooches would display a portrait on one side and a lock of hair on the other, the latter sometimes crafted with semiprecious stones to resemble a bouquet. Those pieces explain the brooch's lasting appeal in a single object: a fastening, an ornament in silver, gold, enamel or gemstones, and, when the wearer chose, a portable memorial worn openly on a garment.