Thanks to the media fanfare that surrounds such glittering society events as the Met Gala, the Oscars, and the Grammys, the public has become increasingly aware of male celebrities’ styled appearance, which recently has included quantities of jewelry—mostly brooches, but also necklaces, rings, and bracelets. While men have, of course, worn jewelry for millennia (consider the treasure trove of golden amulets and necklaces buried with King Tut, or the bejeweled collars worn by sitters for Renaissance portraits), this new era follows more than a hundred years of relative restraint in men’s personal adornment, at least in the West. In American culture, shifting gender norms, mainstream embrace of the hip-hop aesthetic of gold chains, grills, and other “bling,” and generally relaxed standards of bearing and behavior have opened the door for men to experiment with jewelry on a wide scale.
If one sets aside the elaborate, elite jewels made for secular and religious leaders, in the past most men’s jewelry in the United States has been utilitarian. In the colonial period, shoe, knee, and stock buckles—flashy though they might have been—were functional elements for the properly dressed male. These items were made of steel, copper, pewter, iron, silver, or gold, depending on the size of one’s purse; some were ornamented with reflective glass “stones,” or paste. A casual survey of paintings by Boston artist John Singleton Copley reveals many of his male sitters wearing such gleaming accessories. Men also wore mourning rings, as recorded in the diary of prominent Salem jurist, businessman, and printer Samuel Sewall (1652–1730), who attended numerous funerals and recorded receiving a total of fifty-seven mourning rings as gifts from bereaved families on those solemn occasions.*
In other cases, an ornament revealed a public affilation. One of the first and most significant political groups in America was the Society of the Cincinnati, formed after George Washington voluntarily gave up his military commission at the conclusion of the Revolutionary War. The name was inspired by the Roman patrician and military leader Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, who relinquished his rule of Rome to pursue a life as a farmer. Washington, like Cincinnatus, was highly regarded for placing public service over personal gain. The society was formed in 1783 by a group of military officers who served in the Revolutionary War, and their motto, Omnia reliquit servare rem publican (“He gave up everything to serve the republic”) linked Washington’s career with that of Cincinnatus. Its first medals were produced in France in the same year, to designs provided by the French-born artist and Continental Army officer Pierre-Charles L’Enfant. Featuring downturned wings and with olive branches in its talons, the eagle symbolizes the peacefulness of the American republic in the aftermath of the revolution. The early example seen here lacks the original blue and white ribbon that stood for the French alliance in the war. Because it is a hereditary organization, the society’s medal has been officially reproduced numerous times for the descendants of its original recipients by American jewelry firms.
Other organizations—political, social, religious, and educational—also provided clear opportunities for men to declare their affiliation through jewelry. This was particularly true for Freemasonry, which was introduced in the colonies around 1730. Members wore “jewels” featuring some of the symbols that the Masons developed to remind members of their obligation to conduct themselves in a moral and ethical fashion. The square and the compass are among the most common of these symbols.
Medal of the Society of the Cincinnati designed by Pierre Charles L’Enfant (1754–1825), Paris, 1783–1784. Gold, enamel; height 2 inches. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund.
By the late nineteenth century men were beginning to embrace greater ornamentation in their personal accessories, particularly where pocket watches were concerned. A standard item in the male wardrobe, usually accompanied by a watch fob and a showy watch chain, a watch case could support a variety of lively designs and yet remain quietly out of sight except when needed. One example by Tiffany and Company boasts a robust interpretation of the Celtic style. With the successful installation of Cyrus Fields’s transatlantic telegraph cable in 1858 came a flock of jewelry and other ornaments that featured souvenirs from the project, including the watch fob seen here, built around a section of leftover cable. In the twentieth century, as the wristwatch came into vogue, men were given another opportunity to wear an eye-catching but functional accessory.
One prominent New York gentleman, Diamond Jim Brady (1856–1917), was fearless in telegraphing his sartorial preference for gemstones, and lots of them. Born to a poor saloonkeeper on the lower West Side before climbing to a lucrative career in the railroad supply industry, Brady had amassed a gigantic collection of nearly twelve thousand diamonds by his death in 1917. A large man weighing more than two hundred pounds, he was known for a gargantuan appetite and for his taste for oversized gems, which he wore in the form of large brooches, rings, and stickpins.
While Brady’s proclivity for diamonds did not set off a stampede for jeweled ornaments among men, it did foretell the burgeoning interest in male adornment that marked the decades after his death. A new crop of imaginative ornaments began to appear beginning in the 1930s that appealed to the masculine penchant for tools and building, in the form of “Nut and Bolt” cuff links and studs first introduced by Verdura, for instance, and Aldo Cipullo’s juste un clou— “just a nail”—lapel pin dating to the early 1970s. Such severe and subtle designs made it possible for men to enjoy jewelry while remaining within the confines of traditional masculine comportment.
Over the last twenty-five years, which have seen same-sex marriage legalized and gender identity become a point of public postulation, men’s experiments with gem-set jewelry traditionally worn by women have increased in frequency to the point where the sexuality of the wearer is secondary to the beauty of the display. These men enjoy the benefits of personal expression, trotting out jewelry as identity, protection, and a point of pride. They are a bellweather for our times. To paraphrase a famous song from Footloose, let’s hear it for the boys!
* Martha Gandy Fales, Jewelry in America, 1600–1900 (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Antique Collectors Club, 1995), p. 24.
