Medieval Jewellery

Most of the jewellery fashioned in medieval times appears to have been made by the blacksmith. Logically this was the man in the medieval community who worked with metal and other materials and knew how best to manipulate them. It appears also that to be a blacksmith you had to be a man! However, history tells us that both men and women made medieval jewellery.

Many different items were made but perhaps the most popular of these was the brooch. Medieval brooches were fashioned by casting the metal. Various styles and variations could also be achieved by punching the designs into the metal and wires or small circular pieces of metal were fixed to the flat surface of a brooch to create a raised effect. Brooches were
an extremely important piece of medieval jewellery as they were used for practical purposes as well as decorative ones – they were used to hold cloaks in place. In order to do this they had to be a substantial size and strong enough to hold the cloak closed.

Necklaces also adorned people in medieval times. Both men and women wore necklaces for decoration. Necklace production could be very simple with leather and beads or an elaborate mix with semi precious stones. As well as necklaces, pendants were also made. These pendants were fashioned from semi precious stones as well as crucifixes, in the traditional medieval shape, where all arms of the cross are equal in length. It seems that modern jewellery is just a variation on the theme of medieval jewellery.

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