Brooches & Pins
Brooches and pins originally evolved as a method of securing a garment, over the centuries they’ve become more decorative and less utilitarian. Whether glamming up a lapel, collar, or decolletage, pins come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and materials. These versatile jewels can take you from the boardroom to the ballroom, sparkling all the way. To explore further, choose from the Brooches & Pins pictorial glossary below.
Vignettes
An interesting subset of the Art Nouveau jewelry movement was the design and production of medal jewels. Scrambling to recoup the losses incurred when cameos and intaglios became passé, jewelers began to imitate ancient Greek and Roman...
Is the jewelry often labeled “Suffragist (Suffragette) Jewelry” simply indicative of the fashion of the period or was it symbolic of a cause women (and some men) fought for passionately?...
Cameos, valued since antiquity as engraved gems, were exceedingly popular during the Georgian and Victorian periods. Many different materials were used for carving cameos. For hardstone cameos, varieties of agate including onyx, sardonyx, and jasper were popular. These stones,...
Eyes have long been thought of as the window of the soul alternately revealing and concealing one’s deepest thoughts and feelings. Symbolically, the eye has turned up as the all-seeing...
Brooches and Pins are the original form and function jewelry items. At their origin, they served a purpose beyond adornment. In the dark days before zippers, buttons, buckles, snaps, and...
Terms & Definitions
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A bar brooch is an elongated horizontal brooch. Victorian bar brooches were designed as a simple bar with a central motif or plaque. Popular during the Edwardian period, these brooches were often...
Beauty pins are small utilitarian pins used to secure lace, veils, cuffs, and hats. One may also see them called handy pins or baby pins.
A bodice brooch is a large jeweled decoration that is usually centered on the bodice of a woman’s dress. Early bodice ornaments were sewn directly onto the fabric, often with...
A Catherine wheel brooch has a central hub and at least eight radiating spokes. The name comes from its resemblance to the St. Catherine torture wheel (also known as a...
A chandelier in jewelry means with dangling ornaments or with multiple arms. A sevigne brooch or girandole earrings are also chandelier type jewelry.
A dress clip is a type of brooch that attaches with a clip-style back. There are two types of clip backs, one is a double prong hinged clip with sharp points that can pierce...
En pampille refers to a style in which a series of gems, typically diamonds, are arranged as a cascade. The gems descend in size and terminate in a very small “icicle-shaped”...
“En tremblant” is a French term – meaning “to tremble”. It was first used to describe 18th and 19th-century jewelry where parts of the diamond set pieces were attached to a trembler (a...
