June 10, 2016

Queen Elizabeth’s official 90th birthday celebration weekend started today and the royal lady herself wore a sunny primrose yellow Angela Kelly outfit paired with the stunning Richmond Brooch, which belonged to her grandmother, Queen Mary.
The Richmond brooch (by Hunt and Roskell) was a present from the town of Richmond on the occasion of Queen Mary’s 1893 wedding to the future King George V. The large brooch features diamonds set in a silver and gold scrolling design with a central pearl, with a pearl and diamond pendant. The pearl and diamond pendant is detachable making the brooch very versatile. Other pendants could be added, the brooch itself could also be used as a pendant or even as a hair decoration. Queen Elizabeth inherited the brooch when Queen Mary died, in 1953.

June 11, 2016

How do you stand out among a sea of red? In neon green of course! Queen Elizabeth is quite fetching in her vibrant Stewart Parvin coat and Rachel Trevor-Morgan hat.

The Queen also wore a brooch known as the Brigade of Guards Brooch or the Guards’ Badge. The badge combines the symbols of the Grenadier Guards, the Coldstream Guards, the Welsh Guards, the Irish Guards, and the Scots Guards. It features diamonds topped by a crown and the symbols are surrounded by an oval frame with the words QUINQUE JUNCTA IN UNO: “five joined as one”.

The brooch was originally created for the Queen’s grandmother Queen Mary. The brooch is worn annually at the “Trooping the Colour” (a parade to celebrate the sovereign’s birthday). Queen Elizabeth’s actual birthday is on April 21st, but she follows the tradition started in the 1900’s of celebrating it on a Saturday in June when the weather is fairer.

June 12, 2016

Queen Elizabeth’s brooch choice for today’s birthday festivities packs some historical punch.
Queen Victoria’s Bow Brooch:

Queen Elizabeth II at her 90th birthday celebration, one of Queen Victoria’s bow brooches, Queen Alexander with bows down her skirt, Queen Mary with bows as a makeshift stomacher, The Queen Mother with a single bow

The brooch is part of a set of three brooches (two large brooches and a slightly smaller brooch) that were commissioned by Queen Victoria from Garrard. They are constructed from 506 diamonds that she provided. These bows are among the jewels that Victoria willed to the crown for future royal use; they’ve passed from queen to queen.

Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary can be seen wearing the set in photographs. They were known to also hang other jewels from the brooches adding to the sparkle. Queen Elizabeth (the future Queen Mother) wore them singularly in a modest fashion that was in keeping with the times.

Today Queen Elizabeth follows her mothers example and wears just one at a time in a normal lapel brooch position.

The Snettisham Great Torc. Found in Snettisham, UK. Electrum, 150 BC–50 BC. Diam. 19.9 cm. British Museum 1951,0402.2. (Photo: (c) The Trustees of the British Museum)

We've all seen these historical beauties, whether in museums or in articles, heavy gold torcs sometimes with elaborate designs. But have you ever wondered how you would wear such an item?
The British Museum recently addressed this issue in their blog.

How do you put on a torc?

Julia Farley, Curator, European Iron Age collection, British Museum; January 29, 2015

Although this is one of the most famous examples, the form is typical: open at the front, with a flexible neck-ring made of coiled or twisted wires. This type of torc is put on and taken off by being bent out of shape. You can see that one of the terminals of this torc has been pulled slightly forward compared to the other one. This is the result of it being repeatedly pulled open to be slipped on. A re-enactor friend of mine has told me that he often puts a torc on from the front, and then twists it round to bring the terminals to the front. I’ve tried with replicas, and I tend to slip mine on from the back, so there are different ways of doing it.

This constant flexing caused a lot of stress to the metal neck rings of the torc. When you bend metal in this way, it tends to harden and become brittle. You may have experienced this first hand if you have ever wanted to break off a piece of wire for hanging a picture or working in the garden and did this by bending it back and forth until it broke. The same thing happened to some torcs. We have many examples of truly beautiful neck-rings which were worn to destruction – taken on and off so many times that they broke at the back. They have often been somewhat clumsily repaired, as in this case:

(Photo: (c) The Trustees of the British Museum)

The break is covered with a thin sheet of gold foil, but X-radiography of the torc shows that all the wires have snapped! Torcs were quite fragile objects, and they were frequently broken and then repaired in this way. This is curious, because there was an easy way to avoid the problem. If you anneal the metal – heat it up to cherry-red temperature, around 600-700 degrees centigrade – it re-softens. This would have been a simple matter with the technology available. So why were so many torcs allowed to break? And why do the repairs often look like shoddy afterthoughts? I wonder if being the proud owner of a ‘vintage’ torc (old enough to be in need of flamboyant repairs) might have been something to be proud of. Rather than an unfortunate accident, breakage could have been part of the natural lifecycle of a torc. The repaired torc pictured above was buried in a hoard with many other, much newer, ones. By the time it went into the ground, it was probably an heirloom object, perhaps as much as 100 years old. It would have been possible to carry out much more subtle repairs, but perhaps they were supposed to be obvious? Being a member of a family with such a long history of wealth and power was probably a source of great pride, and the repairs might have emphasised the age of the object, and reminded people of the many stories attached to it.

On the Continent, there are other types of torc, which sometimes have clever hidden clasps, hinges, or removable sections such as these ones:

When worn they would have given the impression of a solid ring of metal, but in fact they were relatively easy to put on and take off.

The idea of a hinge was taken up in later British neck-rings found in south-western Britain. They have a discreet hinge at the back, and a clasp at the front that was hidden when the terminals were closed.

From these kinds of evidence, I strongly suspect that torcs were put on and taken off quite regularly, rather than being intended to be worn for very long periods of time. The most decorative were probably worn for special occasions, and some of the simpler designs may have been for everyday wear. But we have so little evidence for what constituted ‘day-to-day wear’ in the Iron Age that it’s hard to be sure.

But there are some torcs which I don’t think could be opened up, such as this one from Trichtingen in Germany, also in the Celts exhibition:

Torc. Silver, iron, 200–50 BC. Trichtingen, Germany. Diam. 29.5 cm. (Photo: P. Frankenstein/H. Zweitasch; (c) Landesmuseum Wurttemberg, Stuttgart 2015)

The gap isn’t wide enough to squeeze your head in, and there is a solid iron core under the silver, so it couldn’t have been bent. It also weighs nearly seven kilos! And if you did wear it, which way up would it go? It seems designed to be viewed upright, like in the picture. But with the terminals at the back the bulls would have been hidden, and with the terminals at the front their heads would be upside down, not to mention how uncomfortable those horns would be, sticking into your collar bone…

I think it’s most likely that torcs such as the one above weren’t worn at all. They might have been symbols of status to be brandished aloft, rather than worn around the neck, just like the way that the antlered god on this plaque from the Gundestrup cauldron hefts a torc into the air, terminals upright. However it was used, the torc was obviously a powerful symbol.

Cauldron. Silver, partially gilded, 100 BC–AD 1. Gundestrup, Denmark. Diam. 69 cm; H. 42 cm. (c) The National Museum of Denmark.

Read the entire article HERE
The museum's companion book (Celts: art and identity exhibition catalogue) is available for purchase as well HERE