Medieval necklaces and neck bands

Medieval necklaces and neck bands were often quite simple. Strings made up of pearls or beads of rock crystal or glass were very popular and universally worn by the upper classes during the Renaissance. Though uncommon, such necklaces were used earlier as well: strings consisting of 1339 beads (1274 carved from rock crystal, the rest made from glass) dating from the early thirteenth century were found in a clay vessel in the Michailowski monastery in Kiev during archaeological
excavations.


More sophisticated necklaces, such as the one from the treasure of Empress Gisela (11th century) found in Mainz, were made up of pearls, beads, and jewels arranged in an intricate design, or consisted of large metal beads decorated with gold filigree and enamel.


Bracelets were similarly made of pearls, beads or metal decorated in various ways.

The habit of wearing earrings originates in Byzantium and did not become widespread in the West until the sixteenth century. Until the thirteenth century, earrings were worn also in the West, but most of these had a characteristically flat, sickle-shape influenced by Byzantine typology. A beautiful example of the type of earrings worn in the West but based on Eastern prototypes is a pair of late tenth-century earrings probably made by a Rhenish workshop (formerly Schlossmuseum, Berlin). These flat, lunette-shaped jewels once belonged to the Empress Gisela, wife of Conrad II.






Pendants, occurring with greater frequency from the fourteenth century, were usually made of silver and greatly varied in shape. Pendants containing relics or bearing inscriptions were worn for the reasons of devotion, sentiment, protection, superstition. An enamelled, ivy leaf-shaped pendant from 1293, decorated with double-headed eagles, fleur-de-lis and a naturalistic tree, is one of the most beautiful examples of thirteenth-century jewelry and was perhaps intended as a reliquary of a particle of the Holy Cross.

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