Necklace
[1] They often serve ceremonial, religious, magical, or funerary purposes and are also used as symbols of wealth and status, given that they are commonly made of precious metals and stones.
These attachments typically include pendants, lockets, amulets, crosses, and precious and semiprecious materials such as diamond, pearls, rubies, emeralds, garnets, and sapphires.
Upper-class Ancient Egyptians wore collars of organic or semi-precious and precious materials for religious, celebratory, and funerary purposes.
[4] Most often these necklaces were ornamented with blue or green enameled rosettes, animal shapes, or vase-shaped pendants that were often detailed with fringes.
[4] New elements were introduced in the Hellenistic period; colored stones allowed for poly-chromatic pieces, and animal-head finials and spear-like or bud shaped pendants were hung from chains.
Gold and silver necklaces were often ornamented with foreign and semi-precious objects such as amber, pearl, amethyst, sapphire, and diamond.
[10] In the Byzantine era, ropes of pearls and embossed gold chains were most often worn, but new techniques such as the use of niello allowed for necklaces with brighter, more predominant gemstones.
[4] In Celtic and Gallic Europe, the most popular necklace was the heavy metal torc, made most often out of bronze, but sometimes out of silver, gold, or glass or amber beads.
[6] AD 400 – 1300: Early European barbarian groups favored wide, intricate gold collars not unlike the torc.
[11] Germanic tribes often wore gold and silver pieces with complex detailing and inlaid with colored glass and semi-precious stones, especially garnet.
[6] Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian groups worked mainly in silver, due to a deficit of gold, and wrought patterns and animal forms into neck-rings.
[4] In the latter half of the century, natural adornments, such as coral and pearl, were joined with enamel and metals to create intricate pendants.
[6] In the early part of the century, the dominant styles were a velvet ribbon with suspended pendants and the rivière necklace, a single row of large precious stones.
[6] By mid-century colorful, whimsical necklaces made of real and imitation gems were popular, and the end of the century saw a neo-Classical resurgence.
[13] 1800–1870: The low necklines of the court gowns fashionable at this time led to the use of large necklaces set with precious jewels.
[4] In Napoleon's court that ancient Greek style was fashionable, and women wore strands of pearls or gold chains with cameos and jewels.
[11][14] In the Romantic period necklaces were extravagant: it was fashionable to wear a tight, gem-encrusted collar with matching jewel pendants attached and rosettes of gems with pearl borders.
The Art Deco movement created chunky, geometric jewellery that combined multiple types of gems and steel.
[23][24][25] Non-jewellery items, for example lanyards, for holding badges and cards, are similar to a necklace and are worn on a neck.
