On the nature of jewellery (summary)

 The writer believes it is useful to do investigation on the vast production of historical jewellery in order to understand the field by checking historical jewellery and adornment in pre-literate cultures and by examining the contemporary western jewellery by looking at their qualities and functions.

Throughout history people have been using jewellery to adorn the body. The aim of jewellery is to add visual accents, colour, contrast and texture and to draw attention specific body part. Jewellery serves as a device that shapes the appearance of a human form.

The act of adorning also please the psychological needs.

In local cultures jewellery can be used to enhance one’s beauty and can also make one  desirable and boost self confidence and change how people view and receive them.

Decoration is said to be more than just an adornament especially in pre-literate cultures and most are decorations are placed differently as an indicator and has different meaning.

The significance of jewellery is to indicate social identity and status. Throughout history jewellery has been used to differentiate or unite the wearer with a specific social groups. The information around jewellery is created to differentiate the similarities and differences among one another .

For instance military insignia serve the purpose of identifying one’s position in an armed force branch making one look similar to others in an army at the same time placing them at a high rank. A larger diamond indicates wealth, the razor blade the wearer to appear as a late blooming punk. In this context diamond are likely to be favoured or accepted while razor blades raises suspicion. Therefore jewellery is known as marker of cipher in a sign language.

Historically jewellery has used to display meaningful codes which function as portable and redeemable wealth mediating with the spiritual.