Category Archives: Dress Accessories

What Size Were Brooches in the Middle Ages Part 2 – Bronze Brooches and Other Tiny Things

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Last time I mentioned the fact that a lot of pre-1600 items are actually quite a bit smaller than we might modernly assume. In addition I mentioned the easy manufacturing techniques involved in lead and tin items.

Bronze requires dramatically more heat – nearly four times the heat! Temperatures near 2000° F require a furnace, with some sort of blower system, like a bellows. Bronze items would therefore have been a more specialized and expensive production. Not as elite as silver or gold, but not the bottom rung of lead and tin either. And even more important, bronze is much stronger than tin or lead.

Getting back to tiny things, let’s talk a little more about tiny brooches. Tiny brooches can’t be used on thick fabrics. This does NOT mean that they can only be used on linen, cotton, or other plant fiber fabrics. It just means that the fabric needs to be relatively thin.

Brooches like the little one that I bought have a big advantage over penannular brooches. A penannular brooch, if tugged and shaken enough can eventually open. But an annular brooch has to break, bend a lot, or have the fabric that it is attached to tear in order to let go. This gives it a couple of big advantages over the other forms of simple closures that were available pre-1600. It won’t open and it can lay super flat.

ringandbrokenringbroochesThe brooch on the left is an annular brooch and the one on the right is a penannular brooch, with a dime for scale (18mm). I chose a heart shaped annular brooch because I wanted to make a point about annular brooches. They must form a closed ring, but that ring can be just about any shape.

What forms of closures were available pre-1600? Laces or ties, hooks, hooks and eyes, buttons and toggles, penannular brooches, annular brooches, fibulas, dress pins, and other miscellaneous brooches. We already discussed penannular and annular brooches, so let’s look at the other options – remember we are looking at tiny things here, preferably things under half an inch, because that was the size of my little brooch. And there must have been a reason for that size, right?

Laces and ties. Easy to make, inexpensive and widely used. They can be made by the average person with commonly available supplies. They can be made to lie extremely flat, but they can break or untie, and it is very difficult to make them really tiny and still have sufficient structural integrity.

Hooks, and hooks and eyes. Exactly what is the difference? Modernly hooks and eyes are small metal sewing accessories that are available at any sewing supply store. Pre-1600 folks did have small hooks and eyes that were made out of metal wire, and they were definitely used extensively in the 1500’s, but there were also many other types of hooks used, and even some large cast hooks and eyes. Earlier cultures, like the Celts and Anglo Saxons sometimes used what I call “hooks and eyes on steroids” – sets where the individual pieces are each an inch or more long.

hooks and eyesThis picture shows a modern selection of hooks and eyes in various sizes on the right (the numbers are the sizes) and a 1500’s collection of hooks and eyes, from the Netherlands on the left. The size 3 modern hook is about 7/16th inch tall (12 mm).

So, if size is an issue the large hooks are out. The tiny hooks and eyes can lay fairly flat, and they meet the size criteria, but unlike many of their modern versions they did not have a little “bump” on the inside of the hook that make the hook and eye set “lock”. This means that the older hook and eyes would have to rely on tension pulling on them and keeping them in place. Without the tension, they open.

Next time: Hooks – Sharp and Blunt, and Buttons and Toggles

What Size Were Brooches in the Middle Ages?

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I could just as easily have asked this question about any sort of common item, and because of my training I often do. I realized a couple of years ago that many people have a total misconception of the size of a lot of things that people used. Despite years of education and extensive training I am NOT completely immune to this problem. I sometimes buy small metal detector finds, and have been caught in this trap.

A little while ago I purchased a very nice annular brooch (ring brooch). It was a good looking bronze piece which had a sort of twisted rope look. There were no dimensions given for the piece and I assumed that it was at least twice the size that it actually was. I was shocked when I saw how tiny the brooch actually was. This made me wonder how common an issue this really was. So, I looked at the given dimensions for many other items that were on sale. Then I went to a couple of the museum sites and looked at the actual sizes of the finds in the museum. And yes, there were a few really magnificent huge pieces, but in general the brooches and everyday pieces were rather small – at least by modern standards.

Researching the size of the people who wore these items in England shows that women during the Middle Ages were generally about 5 foot 2 inches tall and men about 5 foot 6 inches. The article that I read said that this meant that Medieval Women were only an inch taller than modern women. I am 5 foot 9 inches tall. My grandmother, who was born in about 1890, was 5 foot 2 inches, but most of my female friends are at least 5 foot six. Now I consider myself to be a little taller than average, but not dramatically so. Is it possible that these brooches were sized smaller because the people were smaller, or were they sized smaller because of the value of the metal?

I don’t think that we can give a definitive answer to this question, but I would love to hear people’s opinions on this topic. Metal really was a valuable commodity.

Inexpensive metals like tin and lead were commonly used to make lower end pilgrim’s badges and decorative pieces. These metals both have a very low melting temperature, which means that they can be cast using a simple hearth. Pilgrim’s badges give us other important clues as well. Some tears ago I had the good fortune to meet with the curator of medieval artifacts for the Museum of London. Besides the sheer exhilaration of spending time with John in the bowels of the Museum storage looking at pilgrim’s badges, I also noticed the casual finishing of these ubiquitous items. Many of the badges had flashing left over from the manufacturing process. Modernly, we would expect those “manufacturing defects” to be removed. Casting and finishing of tin and lead are easy, so the condition of the pilgrim’s badges indicates the acceptance of a rough finish for some pieces.

Next time: Bronze brooches and other tiny things

One of my pewter brooches, a dime, and the tiny brooch that I bought.

One of my pewter brooches, a dime, and the tiny brooch that I bought.

 

Prayer Beads Revisted – The Components

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Last time we discussed the basic geography of a rosary and what the most common forms were for European Roman Catholics. Now let’s discuss the individual components of the Rosary in greater detail.

Beads, that is what both the Ave and Paternoster beads are. The average person was most likely to have a rosary that was made of wooden, bone or glass beads. Wooden and bone beads were manufactured locally in most places in Europe. The City of London still has a Paternoster Row – a street where Paternosters were once sold and probably manufactured.

Henry VIII’s rosary is a tenner that is made of elaborately carved boxwood beads with a ring at one end and a large gaude/Paternoster at the other. I was fortunate to actually see this rosary in person a number of years ago when it was on tour in Las Vegas at the Bellagio Art Gallery. You can see it online here.

Do glass rosaries surprise you? The import records from England indicate the import of literally thousands of Paternoster strands from Italy during the 1500’s – all made of glass. I have not been able to locate any surviving paternosters that are made of glass. The beads that they were believed to have been made of do appear archaeologically.

What else can the beads be made of? Well, we have already mentioned wood, bone and glass, but all sorts of stones, semi-precious and precious, coral and metal beads were used. There were actually special rules, called sumptuary laws, put into place in some locations to attempt to control the ostentatious display of wealth. The church put specific sumptuary laws in place to prohibit some of their clergy from using rosaries that contained precious stones and coral.

Other materials may also have been used, like clay or rose petals. There is a lot of modern mythology about when mashed rose petals began to be used to make rosary beads. I have not been able to find any reliable scientific information on this technique as a source of medieval rosary beads. I believe that some of the confusion on this topic may be due to the association with the red rose with the cult of Mary. Modern researchers may have taken comments about roses and Mary literally, when they are meant symbolically. This sort of confusion is unfortunately common. For instance, the German word for beads is Perle. Modern English speakers often assume the word means pearl, when it actually just means a bead made of ANY material.

Multi-decade rosaries are often made as loops. The looped rosary is probably the most common form that we find modernly, and it was definitely used prior to 1600. Loops commonly contained 3 or 5 decades. They generally had a decorative tassel or cross. The cross could be a solid cast or carved piece, or it could be made of multiple beads, as demonstrated in this picture. Several rosaries that were found aboard the wreck of Henry VIII’s ship the Mary Rose (July 19, 1545) had constructed crosses like this. Many of the crews skeletons were found with their rosary on their person or in close proximity, indicating that most of the sailors carried rosaries at all times.

English: A rosary found on board the carrack M...English: A rosary found on board the carrack Mary Rose. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Rosary ends could be decorated with crosses, tassels, a large beads called a gaude, or a ring. Remember Henry VIII’s rosary – he had a gaude and a ring.

I hope that this brief summary of rosary components helps you better understand what a pre-1600’s rosary should look like.