Men and women have adorned themselves with jewelry since long before the age of reason! Garlands of flowers, bracelets of woven grass, shells, and stone; such were the first decorations to beautify the human body. We may have been wearing jewelry as far back as 75,000 years ago - 30,000 years earlier
Precious metals, stones, pearls, and beads have carried a host of meanings, intentions, and signif
icance, depending on the era and the culture. Love tokens, lockets containing a portrait or snippet of hair, Victorian jet mourning jewelry, Burmese rubies inserted beneath the skin to protect warriors in battle. Jewelry has acquired, shed, and in many cases re-acquired a multitude of intriguing meanings. In that same spirit of transformation, in different regions of the world, jewelry has attached itself to different parts of the body. In India, jewelry has long reigned supreme and extravagant, ornamenting almost every aspect of a woman, from hair to nose to ankle to toe. Jewelry likewise found its way to the feet in 18th Century England, but there, it was attached to shoes instead of toes, transforming mundane moccasins into ornately buckled masterpieces.
