Earrings

In an­cient times, ear­rings were primar­ily a male at­trib­ute, bear­ing cer­tain re­li­gious or so­cial mean­ings. However, in the Middle Ages, they be­came a com­mon fe­male dec­or­a­tion al­most world­wide. Gradu­ally evolving and chan­ging, the shape of ear­rings be­came enorm­ously di­ver­si­fied. Ear­rings are not only the typ­ic­al hoops, but also stud ear­rings, dangling ear­rings, La Pous­sette ear­rings (a vari­ety of stud ear­rings with a flat stop­per at the back), pier­cing ear­rings, etc.

Be­sides that, mod­ern men and wo­men don’t lim­it them­selves to wear­ing ear­rings only in their ear­lobes; they boldly wear ear­rings in any part of their ears, as well as in eye­brows, nose, lips, or tongue. Ad­di­tion­ally, the com­mon prac­tice known as pier­cing al­lows men and wo­men to wear rings in vari­ous parts of the body oth­er than their ear­lobes.

Stud Earrings

A stud ear­ring is a clas­sic­al ear­ring type. Not shaped like a ring passing through a pin­hole, in­stead it has the shape of a tack or a prong. The dec­or­at­ive front side can have prac­tic­ally any shape, from a set­ting which holds a single gem­stone to the im­it­a­tion of a dangling ring with a pendant. Stud ear­rings are usu­ally fastened with a spe­cial stop­per at the back of an ear­lobe.

Hoop Earrings

The hoop is the most clas­sic­al and an­cient shape of ear­rings, known since pre­his­tor­ic times. The first hoop ear­rings were made of bone or wood; later ap­peared those made of cop­per, bronze, and, much later, the golden ones. As time pro­gressed, this type of jew­elry be­came more in­tric­ate, of­ten dec­or­ated with en­grav­ing, gem­stones, and black­en­ing. In jew­elry stores nowadays, you can find clas­sic­al hoop ear­rings as well as vari­ous unique designs. For ex­ample, one in­ter­est­ing vari­ation is a hoop that seems sol­id but ac­tu­ally is made of two sec­tions. One part is a mi­cro mag­net that holds the ear­ring to­geth­er and keeps it fastened to the ear­lobe.

One pop­u­lar vari­ation of hoop ear­rings is the so-called huggy ear­ring, which looks like a hoop with a mov­able bail. In these ear­rings, the front part can be fairly thick and wide, of­ten dec­or­ated with gem­stones or en­grav­ing, while the bail is much thin­ner and looks al­most in­vis­ible as it passes through the ear­lobe.

Dangling Earrings

Dangling ear­rings came in­to fash­ion in me­di­ev­al Europe and are still pop­u­lar prac­tic­ally all over the world. Dangling ear­rings (or ear­rings with pendants) are prob­ably the most el­eg­ant of this kind of jew­elry; they go well both with even­ing and clas­sic dresses. A more con­tem­por­ary and unique vari­ation of dangling ear­rings is one in which the pendant is set at the back of the item, be­hind the ear­lobe. This is in con­trast to the com­mon vari­ation, in which the pendant is set in front of the ear­lobe.

Clips

Clips are the type of ear­rings that do not re­quire any pier­cing. In­stead, they are fastened on the ear­lobe with the help of a spe­cial clasp. These were es­pe­cially pop­u­lar in the 1980s and were usu­ally made of plastic. Nowadays, clips are of­ten made of sil­ver and oth­er pre­cious metals.

There are sev­er­al kinds of clips. The most mod­ern among them are the clasp ear­rings. They can be de­signed in a vari­ety of ways, from simple, open hoops fastened to an ear­lobe to more com­plex, fili­gree items which clasp gently around the ear’s car­til­age and look like a sort of col­lar.

An­oth­er kind of clips are mag­net ear­rings. These can be worn either in the ears, lips, or belly but­ton. Nor­mally, they look like a simple stud ear­ring with a small gem, but some­times they can be craf­ted in a more in­tric­ate way. It is worth men­tion­ing that mag­net ear­rings usu­ally are not made of a large size, lest they should get loose and lost.

Piercing Earrings

A pin­hole made on skin in or­der to wear vari­ous kinds of ear­rings is called a pier­cing. The most com­mon pier­cing ear­rings are vari­ous hoop ear­rings (in­clud­ing open ones with ball-stop­pers on both ends) and the so-called bars. A stand­ard bar is a straight or slightly curved prong with ball-stop­pers on both ends. There are also bars with vari­ously shaped stop­pers in­stead of balls, and curved ones, which, de­pend­ing on their size, can be used for belly or eye­brow pier­cings.

Tun­nels and plugs are a sep­ar­ate cat­egory of pier­cing ear­rings that look like hol­low or sol­id, flat cyl­in­ders. These are plugged in­to ear­lobes and sit tight in the flesh that sur­rounds them.