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Decorations: China

The practice of carrying fans in official processions, as insignia of honour and power in China, is of great antiquity, and in early ages the custom was not confined to that country. On the monuments of ancient Egypt are to be found representations of fans carried on the tops of long poles, just as to-day in China, before the mighty of the land.

Rings are mentioned in connection with signets in the Holy Scriptures, and date, therefore, from the most remote times. The Egyptians had various representations engraved on their rings, the most common of which was the scaraboeus, or beetle, the symbol of the world. Etruscan rings were frequently of rare beauty, and of great value. The Greeks and Romans were remarkable for their fondness for rings, which were worn in profusion, enriched with precious stones, and engraved with exquisite taste. Rings were in common use among the Anglo-Saxons, those of King Ethelwulf, the father of Alfred the Great, and his daughter Aethelswith in the British Museum, are fine specimens of the goldsmith's art at this period. It was in the Middle Ages, however, that the manufacture of rings attained the highest perfection in our country. Superstitious virtues were ascribed to rings from very early periods, and still prevail with some vitality in Eastern countries, and, in many cases, throughout Europe. They have been, and are still, used in religious and secular investiture, betrothments and weddings, for posies and mottoes, as memorials of the dead, and no article of decoration has been so extensively and prodigally used in most ages and countries.

Female Head-Dresses, jewelled, were much wornformerly. In the old tapestry of the time of Henry VIII., some details are given of the ornaments, as jewels, drops, and spangles. A peculiar fashion of the head-dress, the frontlet, was sometimes very costly. The cap (as well as the lappets) was frequently very highly enriched with jewels, and generally formed into net-work, from whence it derived the word caul. Holinshed describes the procession of Queen Mary in 1553, and says that "she had on her head a Kall of cloth of tinsell beeset with pearle and stone, and above the same upon her head a round circle of gold beeset so richly with pretious stones that the value thereof was inestimable; the same Kall and circle being so massive and ponderous that she was faine to bear up her head with her hand." The head-dresses of Queen Elizabeth were richly ornamented, especially with pearls.

In James I.'s letter to his son in Spain, among other jewels sent for the Infanta, is a "head dressing of two and twenty great peare pearles; and ye shall give her three goodlie peare pendant dyamonts, qwhair of the biggest to be worne at a needle on the middeth of her forehead, and one in everie eare." During the seventh century much talent was exhibited by the Anglo-Saxon females in the art of Embroidery. Women of the highest rank excelled in it. Spinning was so common an employment, even among women of royal blood, that the will of King Alfred terms his family, who were of the female sex, "the spindle side," from which the modern term, spinster, is derived. In these early times there were abundance of goldsmiths and jewellers to assist the fair workwomen in enriching their work. Bede says that they were skilled in collecting "remarkable and precious stones, to be placed among the gold and silver, which were mostly of a ruddy or aerial colour." Of the Anglo-Danish period, we learn that the Danes were effeminately gay in their dress. The coronation mantle of Harold Harefoot, given to the Abbey of Croyland, was of silk, embroidered with flowers of gold. The vestment which Canute presented to the same abbey was of silk, embroidered with golden eagles, and the rich pall which he ordered to be laid over the body of Edmund Ironside was embroidered with the "likeness of golden apples, and ornamented with pearls."