Bejewelled: the Male Body and Adornment in Early Modern Britain

Project leader: Natasha Awais-Dean

Department: Prehistory and Europe

Project start: January 2009
End date: 2012

Other British Museum staff:
Dora Thornton

External partners:
Professor Evelyn Welch (supervisor), Queen Mary, University of London (www.qmul.ac.uk)

Project funded by:
Arts and Humanities Research Council (Collaborative Doctoral Award)

Description:

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, men wore almost as much jewellery as women. Yet despite the importance jewellery had for men, it has almost always been studied as a feminine preoccupation. Recent research on concepts of masculinity, male communities and gift-giving makes it possible to return to objects, inventories and representations to investigate how jewellery marked and promoted gender definitions and distinctions in the Early Modern period. This project addresses this issue by investigating the early-modern European jewellery collection within the department of Prehistory and Europe at the British Museum. In doing so, it aims to provide a new context for these holdings.

There are certainly pieces within the British Museum collection that can be considered primarily as male adornments. These include belt-fittings, cap hooks, certain types of ring and livery badges. Other holdings, such as pendants, are more intriguing, as they cannot automatically be classified as objects associated with men. Finds reported through the 1996 Treasure Act will also be integrated into this research. Consequently, this project hopes to bridge the gap between traditional art history scholarship and archaeological work to provide a strong social and historical context for these objects.

Objectives:

This project asks a number of questions. Is it possible to gender jewellery? Was there a difference between how men and women were seen with their earrings and badges? Did their relationships to these objects differ? What types of distinctive jewellery did men wear and why?

This project will show that men wore jewellery often associated with women. Moreover, jewels worn by women were often owned by their male relatives. All items selected for this study will provide a way into researching ideas of social exchange through objects. In looking at how these objects were made, worn and circulated, a study of these two groups (one exclusively masculine, the other mixed) will challenge existing preconceptions on the relationship men had with their jewellery. These questions will feed into wider debates over men as conspicuous consumers and as participants in the culture of gift-giving.

Closely tied with the idea of men as consumers is the concept of fashion and emulation. Were the pieces of high-quality craftsmanship from workshops of London goldsmiths copied by those working in the provinces? Were these same pieces made in materials of a lesser quality? Conversely, were London goldsmiths imitating popular fashions? How far did the concept of credit (both financial and moral) depend on being seen with expensive jewellery? By answering these questions, this project will provide a new context for the collections investigated.

Image: jewelled and enamelled gold hat ornament depicting the Conversion of St Paul, sixteenth century. Waddesdon Bequest 171

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