How jewelery is the window to the soul and the culture

Welcome back to the fashion column! You guys, I think I struck a gold mine (literally) in my search for this week’s topic. Jewelry! (See the gold mine play on words?!). Anyways, I had the thought to focus on jewelry for the article, and as I’m thinking more about it, I realize how much significance it has for humans. Comparatively, clothes, of course, bear significance outside of their functionality, but they are at least partly functional. Jewelry doesn’t serve much of a functional purpose, at least not in a survival sense like clothes do. It does, however, serve social, spiritual, and cultural purposes, which is what we will be exploring here. This article will more so be a historical endeavor rather than a review of contemporary jewelry. However, modern day ornamentation is sometimes inspired by years or centuries old regalia.

Let’s start with Greece! The Hellenistic era in Greece saw the breakup of Alexander the Great’s empire, legendary math figures like Euclid and Archimedes, increased urbanization, and the construction of great buildings such as the Library of Alexandria. While Euclid discovered his algorithm, Greeks were producing a wide variety of jewelry, including necklaces, earrings, bracelets, rings, diadems, armbands, and more. These pieces, typically made of gold, were inlaid with pearls and gems or semiprecious stones (emeralds, carnelians, garnets, etc.). Garnets specifically gained a widespread prominence after Alexander the Great’s conquests, where these stones travelled through the Indian Ocean, Silk Road and Red Sea, Bactria and the Mediterranean. The deep red gemstone indicated status, power and identity, and were admired for their beauty. The sophisticated cut of garnets found from the regions of Thessaloniki and ancient Pydna indicate that these gems didn’t only convey power and status but reflected the significance of artistry to these civilizations.

Greek jewelry included depictions of the prominent deities, such as Eros. Mythologically, pearls symbolize Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, as she was birthed from the sea on a half-shell. Similarly, wearing pearls paid tribute to Poseidon, the god of the sea, and was believed to help with health and immunity when worn. Depictions of animals on jewelry was also common.

Our next destination is the Great Lakes region where we will be taking a look at the jewelry of the Anishinaabe. Their artistry includes beaded earrings, necklaces, and bracelets. The materials have shifted, with older pieces consisting of shell, wood, bone, and quills. Later, they incorporated glass beads, sterling silver, and copper. Anishinaabe ornamentation focuses around floral or geometric patterns, and symbolic designs.

Although these jewelries are deeply rooted in a tradition and history, the artistry is very much alive today. Bead workers like Nicole Richmond, Quill Christie-Peters, and Lucille Atlookan talked about their artistry in a 2019 interview from “Northern Wilds Magazine.” Richmond said she started beading when she was a girl, and learned from sitting and watching her aunt create the art. She spoke about her motivation to create.

“It’s a feeling in your heart, it’s not a mental thing, it’s a spiritual process running through your body,” Richmond said. This offers insight into the practice itself of bead work in the Anishinaabe communities. The ornamentation is a process, not a product. There’s a deep spiritual significance in their ornamentation and the process of making it.

“For me it has a lot to do with selflove and just having patience with myself. I love the slowness of beading and it requires you to sit in stillness for hours and hours thinking about who we are and where we come from. This makes beadwork important to me,” Christie-Peters said. “I draw on my relationships to my ancestors and that feeds into my work, but I don’t necessarily put myself in a rigid box of having to aesthetically or visually build upon the work of people that came before me.”

Christie-Peters and other Anishinaabe artists exemplify the cultural traditions while creating their own, unique pieces. This speaks to the rooted yet dynamic quality of Anishinaabe beadworks.

You guys I think I may do a part 2 for this topic like I did earlier. It’s too interesting to not do more! This was more historically/sociologically based than usual, and a little less of the typical “fashion article,” but I hope you enjoyed either way! Thanks for reading, and remember to stay stylin’!