Jewellery as an art of decorating ones body

Beauty has always been an ideal that people have strived to attain. Whether moral or physical, beauty revealed itself as a goal, but also as a means to improve one's life from several points of view. Consequently, jewellery proved to be an excellent tool for achieving that ideal. Necklaces, bracelets, earrings, rings and so many others, became in time a symbol of wealth, of elegance, of status, of belonging to a certain social group.

People are inclined to associate jewellery with precious metals or stones. This tendency is partially justified, as the common techniques of producing jewellery involves using such material, or replace it with another that imitates the genuine one. Nevertheless, one thing we should know is that the material of jewellery is carved in does not give its entire value. For instance, religious jewellery such as medallions, crosses or rosaries can be just as well made from wood, as their worth is not an earthly one.

The cultural significance of jewellery has met many transformations. In earlier times, only people of certain ranks were allowed to wear jewels. Moreover, the meaning of wearing jewels varies not only from a temporal perspective, but also from a geographic point of view. For instance, whereas in eastern cultures rings represented a common ornament for men, the western societies in the nineteenth century received that habit with prudence, considering it as a tendency of effeminate men.

Nevertheless, the western estimation of men's jewellery is not a universal one. The market of men's jewellery is not yet as developed as the female jewellery market, its tradition goes a long way back. The history of men's jewellery states that, in the beginning, men used ornaments as a sign of power. They were employed either for the sake of a mere adornment, or for more practical purposes, such as intimidating in warfare by exhibiting the fighter's rank.

Somehow, in the course of history, common people stopped wearing jewels. Jewellery became the privilege of priests and kings, and that situation lasted until later times. Nowadays, though, men's jewellery recovered from that long period of darkness. At first, subtly, it was restricted to rings, pins, watches, but then ostentatiously via the hip-hop musical and cultural trend. New artists imposed the image of a man adorned with heavy golden chains, enormous rings meant to shine and show that the one who wears it has a certain style and status. They included golden teeth that should demonstrate that the wealthy one could afford to spend a little on their dentition, to embellish one's smile, or to simply mark the eccentricity of the owner.

Obviously, men's jewellery regained its social significance. It is no longer regarded as a taboo or as a habit of dubious, peculiar individuals, but as a common routine. Of course, excessive display of jewels remains a practice of some people that state in this manner their belonging to a particular group with which it shares a specific view of life, or tastes in music, art or part of their culture.

Source: http://www.classicarticles.com/Article/Jewellery-as-an-art-of-decorating-one-s-body/66879
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