For me, jewelry is the piece that finishes the outfits, and look at the pearls all the pearls. I sometimes like to use glass pearls and sometimes like to use real pearls, it just depends on how much expendable money I have when I take on a project. At one point, I was really curious about the history of glass pearls and I stumbled across a website that claims that glass pearls were being produced in Italy as far back as the 13th century. However they do not give any resources or references to back up that claim so I am still searching for proof of glass pearls in the 16th Century. If you are interested in reading that page it can be found here:
https://www.bigbeadlittlebead.com/guides_and_information/history_of_faux_pearls.php and in Two Nerdy Girls also has a blog on "Roman Pearls" which can be found here:
In the meantime of my search for more information, I will continue to use them as my pocketbook demands.
For my IRCC dress, I stumbled onto a really good sale at my local big box craft store and I was able to purchase natural pearls for a really good price. For the jewelry I decided to do a necklace, earrings, and bracelet based on “Venetian Lady” by Albrecht Durer, a girdle belt based on my original inspiration portrait, and a hairband circlet based on the Portrait of Issota Brembatti Grumelli by Giovanni Battista Moroni.
All of the jewelry was created using brass jewelry findings/beads and fresh water pearls. The necklace and bracelet was strung onto tiger wire to be able to give it the woven effect.
The belt was done as segments on eye pins in a manner similar to medieval roman jewelry.
The pomander was gifted to me many years ago on a chain, but I felt this was the appropriate belt to add it to.
The hairband was strung on stretchy jewelry elastic to keep it from pulling out my hair and to give it some stretch that metal circlets do not have. A center drop pearl was hung from the center front spacer bead, using a head pin. Metal circlets have a tendency to give me a headache.
The completed jewelry set:
