Bijou (jewellery)
Nevertheless, it is possible roughly to categorise:[2] A bijou can be a mark of social status, and indicates whether the wearer is married, engaged, a debutante, and so forth.
They are also used as purely identification symbols, for example the Compagnons du Tour de France wear them as earrings to show their allegiance to a particular rider.
Generally, a significant date is inscribed thereon, and perhaps their birth colour, or their astrological sign, a patron saint, or other magic symbols.
Bijouterie, the art of making or wearing bijoux, has thus developed its own private language or rebus known only to the initiated.
Symbols may be religious or allegorical (two hands intertwined, for example, indicate the love of two fools, like Romeo and Juliet); Pansies (French: fleurs de pensée, literally "Flowers of thought") indicate "I am thinking of you".
She divides her analysis of the first objects of interaction between people into two types: those that are simply to collect things, as hunter-gatherers do, and those that are deliberately made or modified to be ornaments.
The diversity and manufacture of these pieces, then, indicates a significant development in human evolution, especially as it comes in such various forms (hairbands, placed in clothing, bracelets, anklets, and so forth).
Bijouterie flourished in the civilisations around the Mediterranean Basin, and slowly but surely, bijouitiers established a trade and business, passing on their knowledge through guilds and adapting their wares to the tastes of their clients and the fashion of the day.
After the 1950s, three distinct strands of the art developed: A parure, if made since the 18th century, should be an ensemble (assembly) of several bijoux:
