A new issue of The Rijksmuseum Bulletin has appeared. This issue includes an article in which Monique Rakhorst demonstrates that bow jewels, a fashion thought to have begun in France in the sixteen-fifties, were in fact already being worn in the Netherlands by the early sixteen-thirties
The bow jewel in the Rijksmuseum collection is one of the finest examples of its kind. The provenance of this piece of jewellery is unclear, as is generally also true of the other extant bow jewels. The strong resemblance to a number of ornament prints has often led to the suggestion that the Rijksmuseum’s bow brooch, and bow jewellery in general, was a French concept that came about in the late sixteen-fifties or early sixties, but seventeenth-century Dutch portraits and inventories tell a different story. The bow jewel set with pearls and precious stones was part of the fashion scene in the Netherlands many years before it became in vogue in France. Bow jewels could be purchased from jewellers in the Low Countries in the early sixteen-thirties and at the end of the decade they were worn at court in The Hague. Amalia of Solms-Braunfels already owned several diamond bows in 1640, and in a portrait made a few years earlier the princess wears a pearl bow at her breast. The women at court were not alone in wearing bow jewels – the aristocracy and the wealthy citizens in the Republic followed their example. The bow jewel became popular in France around 1660, but the fashion did not start there – it began thirty years earlier in the Low Countries and remained popular for the whole century.
Contents of The Rijksmuseum Bulletin 66 (2018), no. 1
Articles
Bow Jewels of the Golden Age: In Fashion in the Low Countries
Monique Rakhorst
Feuchère Designs in the Rijksmuseum
Esther van der Hoorn
Wenzel Jamnitzer’s Centrepiece and the Goldsmith’s Secret
Joosje van Bennekom
Acquisitions
Willem Thybaut, Hagar Gives Ishmael a Drink, 1564
Matthias Ubl
Plateelbakkerij De Roos, Jug, c. 1694-1712
Femke Diercks
A Pair of Plates with Figures from ‘The Water Margin’, China, c. 1700
Jan van Campen
Jean-Etienne Liotard, A Dutch Girl at Breakfast, 1756-57
Duncan Bull
Nicolaas Verkolje, The Anglers and The Bird-Catchers, c. 1744
Gregor J.M. Weber
O Nam-Un, Screen, 1823
Menno Fitski
Snuffbox with Views of the Old and New Commodity Exchange in Amsterdam, Hanau, c. 1845
Dirk Jan Biemond
Christoffel Bisschop, Heemskerck and Barents, Planning their Second Voyage to the North, 1862
Jan de Hond
Blouse, Central Sulawesi, late nineteenth century
William Southworth
Wooden Jewellery Box Decorated with Scenes of the Gonini Expedition in Suriname, Suriname, c. 1926
Eveline Sint Nicolaas
For more information please consult: rijksmuseum.nl/en/research/the-rijksmuseum-bulletin