Although jewellery is mainly associated with women, for millennia our male ancestors have adorned themselves with diverse ornaments. Decorative items fashioned initially from natural materials, later from metals, have been worn on the head, at the neck, on the breast, around the waist, wrists, hands and fingers, for religious and ritualistic reasons, as fashion statements, or as visible symbols of wealth, status and power.

For example, in Ancient Greece men wore laurel, olive, oak and other head wreaths and shoulder garlands during ceremonies and parades, their leaves or flowers representing different gods. Decorative metalwork was especially admired throughout Celtic lands, including Ireland, Bronze Age and Iron Age men wearing much jewellery, as evidenced by extant torcs and armlets of gold and silver for noblemen and chieftains; bronze, copper or iron versions for the lower orders.

During the Middle Ages society grew increasingly hierarchical, prompting new gender distinctions in jewellery. Men’s superior status was expressed in crowns, sceptres, collars, striking brooches and other regalia – ceremonial emblems that defined specific roles. Finger rings became especially important in declaring a man’s personal allegiance, especially when emblazoned with a heraldic crest or bearing his lord’s family seal.

As fashion in general accelerated from the 1400s onwards, design also progressed, while expanding trade brought more exotic minerals and materials from distant lands. Coloured gemstones grew highly desirable and jewels were added to collars, brooches, belts, buckles and rings. Base metals were worn by poorer men, many pewter pilgrims’ badges surviving from this period.

During the 1500s and 1600s, jewellery production advanced, with ever more beautiful pieces being created from gemstones, pearls, rare shells and precious metals. Elizabethan men wore hat jewels and instigated the vogue for a single pendant earring that continued for much of the Stuart era, while portrait miniatures of loved ones were set into pendants and brooches.

Historically, the finest articles were worn by the social elite, but cheaper paste and other imitation jewellery brought fashion to the Georgian middle classes and with the Industrial Revolution affordable mass-produced ornaments began to reach a much wider population.

Male jewellery of the 1800s – a time when a masculine and sober, business-like public image gradually evolved – was often as practical as it was decorative. Besides watches on chains with suspended items (see DYAP August 2018), Victorian men often wore tie pins or stick pins to secure their cravat and cufflinks to join the starched cuffs of shirts. By the late 1800s, a cap badge or jacket/blazer lapel badge often demonstrated membership of a sports club or social organisation. Seal or signet rings, jewelled rings and plain bands were also worn, according to personal taste, but conventional males took care not to overdo jewellery that might appear ostentatious or effeminate.

Tie-pins, cufflinks and rings all continued into the 1900s, the new unstarched shirt collars of the 1910s/1920s onwards prompting the addition of a discreet horizontal collar bar under the knot of the tie, to flatten the soft collar points.