Category Archives: Dress Accessories

Would You Know a Fertility Symbol if it Bit You?

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This topic might not be something that many of us think about much in our modern existence, but it is an important concept for those who study pre-1600 civilizations. And to be honest, it can be pretty interesting to investigate. There are probably literally thousands of different fertility symbols, but I feel that people should at least be aware of some of the more obvious ones and understand why they were so important. If you are offended by mater-of-fact discussions of body parts and sexuality, this would probably be a good place for you to stop reading.

Some fertility symbols, like goddesses, vulvae, and phalli are pretty obvious. It always makes me laugh when people ask about something that I am selling in my shop, and when I explain that it is a fertility symbol, they respond with something like “Oh, I don’t need any fertility in my life!” Really? You don’t want a raise at work, and un-expected gift, or a winning lottery ticket?

Modernly many people often think of fertility purely as animal reproduction, but in a culture based on natural resources, which most pre-1600’s cultures were, the best thing that could possibly happen was fertility. Without fertility there was no grain for people and animals, no fish to dry for the winter, no animal offspring, and starvation. In a pre-modern society there was no international aid organization to rescue your group if the crops failed.

And people understood where fertility came from – sex! So the exaggerated female form, the vulva, the penis, and testicles were natural representations of a desire for fertility. Good crops, a good sailing voyage, a good trading expedition, even a battle that was won, were all viewed as fertility.

The Roman legionnaires wore an interesting assortment of decorations that were shaped like penises and testicles on their gear. Some of them were very realistic and three-dimensional, but others were much simpler. This is an example of a Roman strap end.

Roman Phallic pendantI am also perpetually amused by the “prude factor” in modern society. In a culture where everything from beer, to toothpaste, to cars, uses sex to sell their products, the matter of fact presence of a penis, or other sex organ totally freaks some people out. When I started making glass goddesses to sell in my shop, I actually had parents refuse to let their children in my shop because of the goddesses being there. A couple told me that they just didn’t want to have to explain them to their children. Now as this picture demonstrates, my goddesses are not exactly graphic content. I still sell them, along will any glass crosses, or phalli that I make, up on the counter, so that young children can’t easily see them.

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So what else is out there that you might have missed? We will talk about that next time.

But What Do I Do With Those Dress Pins Part 2

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So last time we discussed a little about dress pins and started looking at portraits that show pins in use as a dress accessory. One of the most important things that we have to look for when researching the use of pins is artists who do very precise and detailed portraits.

Rogier van der Weyden is definitely one of those artists. He painted a portrait known as Lady Wearing a Gauze Headdress (1445) that shows at least two pins being used for a complex headdress.

He also painted the Braque Family Triptych (1450). The right wing of the triptych shows Mary Magdalene, and it also clearly shows the use of a pin to hold a sleeve in place.

Another Rogier van der Weyden painting, also known as Portrait of a Lady (1455), shows several pins being used to anchor a fine veil to the top of a tall cap.

And this Portrait of a Lady by Rogier van der Weyden (1460) shows pins being used on both her headress to hold her veils in place and to anchor the sheer fabric of her neckline.

You may have noticed all of the paintings entitled “Portrait of a Lady” – all that means is that the name of the person in the painting has not been determined.

Ercole dé Roberti painted a portrait of Ginevra Bentivoglio (1480) that shows exactly one pin at the very top of her bun. You will definitely need to hit the “200%” button, but it is clearly there.

This portrait of Mary of Burgundy (1490), by Michael Pacher, shows a pin being used to attach a decorative pendant to her headdress.

Quentin Massy’s portrait, The Moneylender and His Wife (1514) shows a pin used to hold a veil in place under a hat.

Lucas Cranach the Younger painted a portrait of Katharina von Mecklenburg (1545), that shows a number of pendants or earrings hanging off the bottom of her hat. Unfortunately it is impossible to tell how these items are attached, but there are other portraits that show pins holding the pendants/earrings in place. My friends and I used to joke about the Italian women sending earrings to their cousins in Germany, but they didn’t have pierced ears, so they would just hang them on their hats. There is no way to know if this is true or not, but the lack of women in German portraits without earrings is notable.

A Portrait of Martha Thannstetter by Bernhard Strigel (1515) shows a pin being used to hold a wrapped veil.

And of course there are tons of portraits where we assume that there is a pin being used, but the artist has not painted them. Pieter Aertsen’s and Joachim Beuckelaer’s paintings of women working in the marketplace show several examples of what appears to be pins in use to hold on sleeves and partlets, but there are no actual pins showing in the paintings.

And then this post 1600’s painting by Louise Moillon shows two women in a marketplace. Both of them have pins holding their partlets in place.

We know that pins could also be used to pin the front plackets into women’s dresses. I could not find any portraits that show this, but records show that they were still doing this in Colonial America.

People used dress pins to close or decorate their clothing the same way that we would use safety pins, or velcro, or even a zipper.

But What Do I Do With Those Dress Pins?

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For anyone who follows me on Facebook, my Etsy shop, or in my actual shop, you probably already know that one of my big selling items is dress pins. I have been getting enough questions about these pins lately that I decided it was time to write another blog about them. I originally wrote a basic blog about dress pins a couple of years ago, called Pins, Pins and More Pins, and another called Authentic Dress Pins about the fact that we make spiral headed dress pins.

Now I do make the early period dress pins that are three to five inches long – the kind that are usually used to clothes shawls and brats and such. But right now I am talking about the small wire spiral headed dress pins that appear in the archaeological record in the 1200’s and are made the same exact way solidly into the Victorian era.

For those who may not be certain exactly what I am talking about, here is a picture of the two sizes of dress pins that I sell in my shop. In pre-1600 Europe they came in a virtually infinite selection of sizes, from really short (about 3/4 of an inch) to ridiculously long (three or four inches long), but these two sizes seem to work for most people.

two pinsAnd here is a link to some pre-1600 pins that were found in Great Britain. They find thousands of these all over Europe.

So the most common question that I am asked is, “what are they used for?” And my semi-wise-guy answer is: holding your clothes together. This is actually an understatement, since they are used for holding clothing, hats, veils, and just about any other dress accessory that you can think of in place.

How do we know what pins were actually used for? Well, they show up in inventories, but they also show up in a fair number of paintings and portraits. The earliest portrait that I could find is dated to about 1410 – A Portrait of a Lady. If you zoom in on her head coverings there is no attempt to disguise the use of pins to hold everything in place.

I should mention, that several people have told me that men also used these dress pins to hold their clothing in place. I have not spent a lot of time actually looking for pins in men’s portraits, but so far I have not found any. This does not, of course mean that they did not use pins, only that they did not either show, or that the artists did not paint the pins into the portraits.

The Portrait of Marie de Pacy (1425) also clearly shows the use of pins, a fancy one in the middle and many smaller pins on other parts of her headcovering.

The Master of Flémalle painted the Merode Alterpiece in 1427 and this detail of the left wing of the alterpiece shows a woman with several pins in her headpiece. A couple of years later he painted a Portrait of a Woman (1430) which shows several pins being used to hold a lady’s complex, multi-layered veil system in place.

Next time we will look at a couple of very prolific artists and some of the things that they showed pins being used for!