The jewellery items known as brooches first served as practical fasteners for simple woven cloth garments. Primitive early brooches were formed from natural materials like bone or flint, metal brooches being worn from the Bronze Age. Throughout Celtic and Viking society circular metal pin brooches were used to secure shawls and cloaks, while Anglo-Saxon disc, annular and cruciform brooches also joined together fabric, for instance long brooches at the shoulders of tubular gowns. Varying decorative techniques characterised garment pins and brooches from different cultures, but ornate gold, silver-gilt or silver stone-set brooches always expressed wealth and status, as distinct from ornaments of base metal and glass beads.

From the high Middle Ages, more money was spent on luxury goods and jewellery grew more decorative. Circular or heart-shaped precious metal brooches were worn as garment fastenings, as love tokens and for devotional purposes, some bearing religious inscriptions. Brooches and other jewels were also exchanged as gifts in elite circles, becoming an important aspect of ceremonial and social life, while Elizabethan ladies displayed ostentatious cameos, enamelled and jewelled brooches on their stiff gown stomachers. Costly breast ornaments and stomacher brooches remained in vogue during the 17th century: set with diamonds, rubies and emeralds mined from newly-colonised lands, these often formed part of a parure or suite of matching jewels. A notable style in the late 1600s was the jewelled bow-knot brooch or ‘Sevigné’, named after the famous letter-writer Madame Sevigné.

Jewellery grew more diverse and fanciful in the 1700s, fashionable bodice ornaments formed as delicate floral bouquets with wired ‘tremblant’ jewels that caught the light, while coloured foiled paste jewels introduced attractive, more affordable imitation jewellery’. Neoclassical taste between around 1770 and 1820 revived ‘antique’ cameos, while travellers picked up picturesque souvenirs on the Grand Tour. Brooches also entered the repertoire of sentimental jewellery, some set with lovers’ arrows, hair, miniature paintings and complex symbolic motifs. The Victorians admired brooches, for mourning and fashionable display, and when portrait photography became established in the mid-1800s ladies were invariably portrayed with a large brooch to set off their neckline. These accessories remained in vogue, bold circular brooches dominating the 1880s, narrow bar brooches popular during the 1890s and early-1900s. Between the wars Art Deco taste favoured streamlined brooches in semi-precious stones, alongside cool platinum and diamond dress clips. Small but precious personal items, many Victorian and later brooches have passed down the generations as prized family heirlooms.