Bracelets

Since the Pa­leo­lith­ic Age, men and wo­men have dec­or­ated their wrists with brace­lets either for re­li­gious, mys­tic­al, or dec­or­at­ive pur­pose. Nowadays, there are many vari­ations of male and fe­male brace­lets which dif­fer by ap­pear­ance, design, and ma­ter­i­als. Fe­male brace­lets are usu­ally bright, abund­antly dec­or­ated with gems and or­na­ments, while male brace­lets are more re­served, of straight and simple shape. Fe­male brace­lets can be in the form of closed or open hoops. They may be hinged or com­pound, made of beads or of in­ter­la­cing met­al wires - the choices are count­less. Gen­er­ally, any kind of mod­ern brace­let design is suit­able for wo­men. Tra­di­tion­al male brace­lets are the chain and hinged ones, as well as those of fili­gree in­ter­laced met­al wires (the so called woven brace­lets).

As for the ma­ter­i­als, brace­lets can be either met­al, made of gold, plat­in­um, sil­ver, cop­per, bronze or oth­er al­loys, or made of leath­er, plastics, bone, and wood. Gen­er­ally, any kind of brace­let can be dec­or­ated with or­na­ments, pre­cious and semi­pre­cious gems, and some­times with com­mem­or­ative in­scrip­tions or im­ages. Brace­lets which sym­bol­ize friend­ship, sym­pathy, or mem­ber­ship in a cer­tain so­cial or cul­tur­al group are also very com­mon and pop­u­lar.

Bangles

Bangles (also called hoop brace­lets) are de­signed in the clas­sic­al shape of a simple hoop. These emerged in an­cient times, primar­ily made of wood and bone, and, later, of cast metals. This design is still the most pop­u­lar one. Though dangles were primar­ily com­mon for both men and wo­men, nowadays they are of­ten re­garded as a fe­male ac­cess­ory. Today's fash­ion fea­tures bangles made of pre­cious metals, bone, and ivory. However, plastic brace­lets with im­it­ated pre­cious gems are quite pop­u­lar as well.

Chain Bracelets

Chain brace­lets are an­oth­er com­mon type of brace­let. Al­though earli­er chain brace­lets were nor­mally re­garded as a male at­trib­ute, they have re­cently lost the strict gender con­nota­tion. Nowadays, chain brace­lets are suit­able for both men and wo­men. Chain brace­lets are al­most al­ways made of met­al, of­ten pre­cious metals or oth­er al­loys, and can be dec­or­ated with one or more small pendants or charms. Be­cause of its tex­tured sur­face made of chain links con­nec­ted one to an­oth­er, this type of brace­lets is rarely dec­or­ated with gems or en­grav­ings. Thin and del­ic­ate chain brace­lets are usu­ally worn by young wo­men and girls, who may put them either on their wrists or ankles, while thick and massive chains usu­ally are con­sidered suit­able for young and adult men and ma­ture wo­men.

Adjustable Bracelets

Ad­justable brace­lets, also known as cuffs (wide and sol­id ones) ap­peared in the Bronze Age. This type of brace­let looks like a com­mon open ring. Each end of such a brace­let is of­ten dec­or­ated with small cast met­al fig­ures or balls. These brace­lets come in count­less vari­ations of shapes, widths, thick­nesses, and designs -- from a simple and re­served pol­ished met­al band to a true jew­elry mas­ter­piece with in­tric­ate en­grav­ing, or­na­ment­a­tion, and abund­ant gem­stone de­cor. Ad­justable brace­lets are of­ten worn not only on the wrist, but also on fore­arms or up­per arms. Thus, they need to be flex­ible enough to re-size and re-shape to fit the wrist or arm of the wear­er. For this reas­on, they are usu­ally made of met­al; plastics, bones, or wood are fairly ri­gid ma­ter­i­als which can­not ex­pand enough and may simply crack while the brace­let is be­ing worn.

Hidden-Hinge Bracelets

Hid­den-hinge brace­lets ori­gin­ated from hoops. The design of these brace­lets con­sists of two semi­circles with ends that are joined on one side with a hinge and on the oth­er side with a lock­er. The lock­er is usu­ally hid­den, as well as the hinge, and is of­ten dec­or­ated with a single gem. As a rule, hinge brace­lets are made of met­al dur­able enough to pre­vent the lock­er and hinge from break­ing dur­ing use. Hid­den-hinge brace­lets are rarely made of gold, plat­in­um, and oth­er costly metals and al­loys; in­stead, sil­ver, bronze, or oth­er cheap al­loys are used. Yet some jew­el­ers oc­ca­sion­ally ex­per­i­ment with this brace­let type, pro­du­cing ori­gin­ally de­signed, beau­ti­ful hid­den-hinge brace­lets from pre­cious metals em­bel­lished with gems or dec­or­ated with en­grav­ings.

Link Bracelets

Flex­ible link brace­lets con­sist of small, flat links that of­ten look like met­al plates, con­nec­ted to each oth­er with hinges or springs. These links usu­ally have plain up­per sur­faces, some­times dec­or­ated with small gem­stones. Link brace­lets with smooth sur­faces usu­ally are con­sidered male jew­elry, while en­graved, soph­ist­ic­ated, and fancy link brace­lets are con­sidered to be fe­male dec­or­a­tions. Link brace­lets of­ten are used as wrist­watch bands. There are nu­mer­ous vari­ations of tra­di­tion­al designs as well more in­tric­ate tex­tures.

Woven Bracelets

Woven brace­lets usu­ally are made of soft pre­cious metals, such as sil­ver, cop­per, and gold, and they look like thin, in­ter­laced wires. Some­times, if a jew­elry maker has lim­ited him­self to pro­du­cing thin and del­ic­ate in­ter­la­cing, these brace­lets may look rather mod­est. On the oth­er hand, woven brace­lets may be real mas­ter­pieces of braid­ing in which in­tric­ate and com­plex in­ter­la­cing joins mul­tiple design ele­ments in­to com­plete com­pos­i­tion.

Beaded Bracelets

Beaded brace­lets, some­times also called string-brace­lets, ap­peared at the very time that pre­his­tor­ic people began mak­ing body dec­or­a­tions of bones, sea­shells, plant seeds, and stones. At first, these were rather mod­est, but, after people learned to cast metals and pol­ish stones, their beaded brace­lets be­came more and more lav­ish and fancy. Nowadays, there are nu­mer­ous vari­ations of beaded or string-brace­lets. They can be made of pre­cious ma­ter­i­als, semi­pre­cious stones, glass, plastics, wood, ivory, etc.

Ankle Bracelets

Ankle brace­lets are tra­di­tion­al fe­male dec­or­a­tion in Ar­ab­ic coun­tries and In­dia. His­tor­ic­ally, they were usu­ally dec­or­ated with tiny bells and worn by fe­male dan­cers who com­bined ankle brace­lets with clank­ing loin­cloths or shawls and wrist brace­lets. Jew­elry dangling and clank­ing was a part of the melody, help­ing the dan­cer to cre­ate and fol­low the dance rhythm.

The most pop­u­lar design of an ankle brace­let is that of a thin and re­served chain with one or few pendants. Today, these are worn by wo­men all over the world. Cheap ankle brace­lets are of­ten made of bronze, si­lu­min, and oth­er al­loys, while more ex­pens­ive ones usu­ally are made of sil­ver, gold, and plat­in­um and of­ten are dec­or­ated with a few, small gem­stones or del­ic­ate pendants.

Symbolic Bracelets

Be­sides pure dec­or­at­ive pur­poses, brace­lets of­ten bear sym­bol­ic mean­ing. In Europe and the US, and later in East­ern Europe, the so called “brace­lets of friend­ship” have be­come very pop­u­lar. These usu­ally are braided threads form­ing fancy or­na­ments or in­scrip­tions. Braided brace­lets were a com­mon dec­or­a­tion of the Nat­ive Amer­ic­ans; they come from times when Europeans didn’t know any­thing of the New World. In the 1960s and 1970s, the pop­ular­ity of braided friend­ship brace­lets reached its cli­max as a sig­ni­fic­ant part of the hip­pie move­ment and its sub­cul­ture. These brace­lets usu­ally are braided by the giver, presen­ted as a sym­bol of friend­ship or in token of one’s secret dreams com­ing true. Some be­lieve that when a self-braided brace­let is torn, a dream of its own­er is sure to come true.

Brace­lets with re­li­gious im­ages or with the la­bel of a sub­cul­ture are an­oth­er well-known kind of sym­bol­ic brace­let. Their design may vary from clas­sic­al, en­graved hoop brace­lets to braided and leath­er ones with cer­tain or­na­ments. Ori­gin­ated in an­cient times, when any ob­ject worn on ones body either dec­or­ated or sym­bol­ized something, these brace­lets re­main as pop­u­lar and as di­ver­si­fied as ever.

Charm Bracelets

Charm brace­lets are known prac­tic­ally throughout Europe. The dis­tinct­ive fea­ture of this brace­let type is that their design en­ables the wear­er to per­man­ently or tem­por­ary at­tach vari­ous pendants and beads of cer­tain charm mean­ing to the brace­let. The his­tory of charm brace­lets goes back to the Neo­lith­ic Age. At that time, people wanted to pro­tect them­selves from evil or ac­ci­dents with the help of pieces of wood, stone, or oth­er nat­ur­al ma­ter­i­als of fancy or un­usu­al shapes which were be­lieved to bring luck in hunt­ing, fight­ing, craft­ing, trad­ing, etc.

In the late 1990s, the trend of wear­ing charm brace­lets once again came in­to fash­ion. Many jew­elry makers and jew­elry brands in both Europe and North Amer­ica gave the quick­est re­sponse to the de­mand, pro­du­cing mod­u­lar golden and sil­ver charm brace­lets with flex­ible designs. In ad­di­tion to brace­lets, a great vari­ety of charm beads, en­graved or dec­or­ated with gem­stones, are be­ing pro­duced, be­cause wear­ers tend to change charm beads and pendants de­pend­ing on their activ­it­ies, per­son­al needs etc.

One par­tic­u­lar type of European charm brace­let is the Itali­an charm brace­let, which has a smooth chain body onto which charm beads are strung, not hung. These are es­pe­cially pop­u­lar for their con­veni­ent and el­eg­ant design. Also, Itali­an charm brace­lets have links that can be eas­ily ad­ded or re­moved; this en­ables the wear­er to mod­u­late the length of the brace­let de­pend­ing on his or her wrist size.