If your mother hasn't given you any of her jewels, and your father hasn't given you so much as a gold chain then you're reliant on your husband to present you with rings and pearls, brooches glowing discreetly on the severest of lapels, bracelets to slide beneath silken cuffs.
A jeweller who will break up and remake jewels that are no longer wearable, and reset them more fashionably or suitably for the latest wearer, or combine gold and stones from different pieces for new uses, is essential. Ear rings, the most personal expressions of the taste of the wearer, are the jewels most likey to be made up and remade.
Necklaces are always pearls or gold, or both. Pearls are particularly fine in very long strings, as in ropes of. Then they can be casually tied in a loose knot on the collarbone with the diamond clasp resting on the opposite side of the throat; they are particularly fine if wound together with a golden chain and the whole tied-off together. Of course for wearing with day clothes then a short, barely graduated necklace fastened at the back of the neck with a plain gold clasp is what you need. Or just a short, worked gold chain which you needn't take off ever. The ropes and intertwines are for bare skin or velvet.
Brooches can be of gold or silver, depending on the stones and setting. Think of them as paintings and your lapel, indeed your whole dress, as the wall on which they rest. Husbands are the people to choose brooches and give them on your birthday - concentrated expressions of complex understanding and feeling, just as are paintings.
Bracelets are best silent, of precious metals, and intricately worked and inlaid; They should slide easily under a sleeve and give off a small peek of richness to the cloth (or the arm in summer).
Rings are often the most intrinsically valuable of jewels, carrying stones set within landscapes of stones; they often come from earlier generations, as do the pearls, and carry family histories and celebrations with them. Apart from your wedding ring, which is worn always, rings are worn to display both wealth and affiliation, as well as to display the beauty of the hand that wears them.
So you can see, quite literally, a great deal in the jewels a woman wears. While costume jewellery can be amusing and fun to play with when dressing informally or in private circumstances, when stepping into the public gaze it is inappropriate; and if you are so unloved that costume jewellery is all you have, then wear no jewels at all.
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14 comments:
lovely.
jewellry mostly passes me by - perhaps I should look more closely.
My dear mother gave the few jewels she had - including her beautiful emerald engagement ring - to the nice man who knocked at the door and offered to value her jewellery for her.
Sigh...
No-one has many jewels Elby, I wasn't writing of the tiara classes and serious jewel management. But to have lost a ring of such import...
I do not know if you have sisters but if so that really hurts.
Always listen to the jewels B, they speak quite clearly about much more than wealth in money terms.
"and if you are so unloved that costume jewellery is all you have, then wear no jewels at all."
I'm afraid this statement, for once, makes me very sorry for you. For most of the world love is not about the type of jewellery you have and there are many ways in which love can be shown which vary from person to person.
You have left out the first half of the statement 13.54:
'While costume jewellery can be amusing and fun to play with when dressing informally or in private circumstances, when stepping into the public gaze it is inappropriate;...'
As you say, there are many ways of showing love but in this culture no jewels is not a sign of poverty (for I am not writing of the great jewels that express great wealth), but of belonging to another culture, and not one that displays an aesthetic I value.
Cultures are ranked by us all, you know, and it is dishonest to pretend that they are not. A festoon of costume jewellery at a public appearance carries its message. Often even more clearly than dress. And you surely cannot pretend that what we wear is of no importance or that it does not carry its own complex communication.
Yes jewels custom or otherwise carry their messages - but they do not tell me (in my very middle class circles in the UK) whether a lady is loved or not. I have seen the splendidly jewelled who are not and the gaudy and badly dressed who clearly are - not that I am saying that this is the rule either; there are no rules. It is also far from unknown for men to buy jewels as a guilt offering I'm afraid.
And before you ask, yes I do sometimes buy jewellery for my wife (of all varieties), although often my wife will chose. But there are so many other things of beauty - books, places, people, art, food and wine, looks and words that it is just plain silly just to apply a single test of a certain type of jewels. I'm afraid I rank my own (and nearly everyone else,s culture much higher than that) - and although I disagree intensely with many of your political views, your other writing usually shows that you probably do as well?
What jewels does poverty wear?
Not having much money doesn't mean that the kinds of jewels mentioned here are not held in all families. Little girls are given gold, coral, bigger girls receive engagement rings, wedding rings; anniversaries and events are celebrated with jewels.
We're all poor. For most it is the human condition. That doesn't mean we can't have jewels. We don't all want to be Cornelia, but if we do best to follow her example and not appear in public in tawdry baubles.
"you surely cannot pretend that what we wear is of no importance or that it does not carry its own complex communication": no pretence; I am nearly deaf to it. So I simplify my preferences into either dressing up properly - morning suit for a wedding, that sort of thing - or dressing down in practical, comfortable, quiet, clean clothes. I don't care for limp-wristed compromises like the lounge suit. Not that I'd try to impose this view. It takes all sorts.
It must be nice too live in a jeweled world. Most of the world does not.
How many recession people are contemplating jewels?
It is an odd ugly people who must be covered in baubles.
Fine knacks for ladies, cheap choice, brave and new
Good penniworthes, but money cannot woo;
I keep a fair, but for the fair to view;
A beggar may be liberal of love.
Tho' all my wares be trash, the heart is true,
the heart is true, the heart is true.
Great gifts are guiles and look for gifts again,
My trifles come, as treasures from my mind,
It is a precious jewel to be plain,
Sometimes in shell, the orient pearls we find.
All others take a sheaf, of me a grain,
of me a grain, of me a grain.
Within the pack, pins, points, laces, and gloves
And diverse toys, fitting a country fair
But in my heart, where duty serves and loves,
Turtles and twins, courts brood, a heavenly pair.
Happy the heart that thinks, of no removes,
of no removes, of no removes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGX1XQaLQ0M
Costume jewellery can also be worn on theatre stages and concert platforms (hence the name) - so the audience is left wondering if it's the real thing or not (I've had people checking my necklaces after performances).
It doesn't need to be splendid, or gaudy, just right for the person - that's why guilt jewellery doesn't count.
Never accept 'guilt jewellery' JL.
Leave the guilty in their shame.
No woman marries for money; they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him first.
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