The Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries

In Europe, earrings virtually disappeared between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, as hairstyles and headdresses that completely covered the ears, and later high ruff collars, made them impractical. Large Earrings finally began to revive in the late sixteenth century, as ruffs gave way to standing collars. At first, complex enameled designs were popular, but improved techniques of gem cutting soon shifted the emphasis to faceted diamonds. In the seventeenth century, large, pear-shaped pearl pendants were a favorite earring style, and those who could afford to do so wore two in each ear. It was also fashionable to wear pendant earrings on strings or ribbons threaded through the earlobes and tied in bows, and to tie ribbon bows at the tops of earrings to achieve the same effect. Similar earring styles were also worn by fashionable gentlemen, but usually in one ear only.

By the late seventeenth century, earrings had become an essential element of dress, and larger and more elaborate forms began to develop. Two of these became the dominant styles of the eighteenth century: the girandole, in which a single top cluster branches out like a chandelier to support three pear-shaped drops, and the pendeloque, a top cluster with a long single pendant. New sources of diamonds, along with new methods of cutting them, developed early in the eighteenth century, made them the material of choice for jewelry, and high-quality paste imitations were also available. Glittering girandoles and pendeloques, visually tied to the ears by stylized ribbon bows of diamonds set in silver, effectively balanced the high, powdered hairstyles of the period. Despite their refined and delicate appearance, such large earrings were quite heavy; some had additional rings soldered to the tops, permitting the wearer to take some of the weight off of her ears by tying the earrings to her hair.

In the late 1840s and through the 1850s, a new hair-style, with hair parted in the middle and gathered to the back of the head in loops that covered the ears, caused a virtual disappearance of earrings. Around 1860, once again owing to a return to upswept hairstyles, long pendant earrings made a comeback, and through the 1860s and 1870s they were produced in an astonishing variety of styles. One major theme was historical revival, with Egyptian and Classical styles particularly popular. Some revival earrings, such as those produced by the Castellani family in Rome, were fairly faithful reproductions of recent archaeological discoveries; others were fanciful pastiches of classical earring forms, architectural elements, and other motifs such as amphorae. Earrings with carved classical reliefs of coral or lava, or Roman glass micro-mosaics, were very fashionable, and were often brought back as souvenirs by travelers to Italy. Other popular styles were naturalistic renditions of leaves, flowers, insects, and birds' nests in gold, enamel, and semiprecious stones; enameled renaissance-revival styles; and, for more precious gems, floral sprays and cascades. A new style in the 1870s was the fringe or tassel earring, with a graduated fringe of pointed drops suspended from a large oval pendant.

In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, large pendant earrings went out of fashion, in part because they were incompatible with the newly fashionable high dress and blouse collars, and with the elaborate "dog collar" necklaces worn for evening, which almost completely covered the neck. Small single-stone and cluster earrings, either firmly mounted to the ear wire or mounted as pendants to move and catch the light, were the most commonly worn style through the early twentieth century. The most fashionable earrings of all were diamond solitaires, which became more available after the opening of the South African diamond fields in the late 1860s. New cutting machines and open-claw settings, both of which increased the amount of light reflected by diamonds and made solitaire earrings more appealing, were developed in the 1870s. To prevent valuable diamond earrings from being lost, catches were added to secure the bottoms of the ear wires. Another innovation, first patented in 1878, was the earring cover, a small hinged sphere of gold, sometimes finished in black enamel, which could be snapped over a diamond earring to protect it from loss or theft. By the end of the century diamond ear studs (also called screws), with a threaded post passing through the ear, and held securely in back by a nut screwed onto the post, were also popular.