WEARABLE HERITAGE

Materials

 

What intrigues me most about materials is the combination of different materials used in costume and jewelry. The unlikely combination of glass with fiber, silver and plastic, cloth with stone, truly has my fascination.

 

All kinds of material used in costume and jewelry could be listed here, from cobbles to silks and from seeds to dyes. However, I would like to use this page as an landing page for a list of materials dominating in costume that personally fascinate me. Such as silver associated with bridal wealth, or alloys that are sometimes deliberately used to diminish the economic value of silver in jewelry.

 

This brings us to an interesting phenomenon when it comes to materials used. Sometimes the material is not that important, and the colour of other properties is what counts. Instead of describing glass beads on veils, the different patterns and colors is often what matters. Gass may easily be replaced by other materials, such as plastic, without losing the effect of protection. Replacing semi-precious stones with other, less valuable materials, is a practice you can trace throughout history. In our worldview these replacements may seem strange, but in antiquity and in some contemporary cultures, this was in fact very much accepted and did not change the meaning or the power of an amulet at all.

 

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