In 1944, the designer Oliver Messel was released from his war duties in camouflage to work on the film Caesar and Cleopatra, adapted from George Bernard Shaw's play. It was the only colour film on which he ever worked. A master of pastiche period style, Messel brought all his imagination and ingenuity to creating Roman and Egyptian costumes and settings in the context of the mid 1940s.

Wartime shortages of materials was no problem for Messel, who knew that in theatre and on film, an accurate depiction of reality was not required. He had always been creative in his use of materials, and needed no 'real' gold metal or chased decoration. This example is of an undecorated base shows something of his techniques; the base is possibly a light metal edged with strong yet flexible millinery wire, the whole overlaid with brown paper adhesive tape. In other surviving completed armbands this base was painted to simulate gold metal and an appropriate decoration in moulded leather was then attached.

Oliver Messel (1904-1978) was Britain’s leading theatre designer from the early 1930s to the mid 1950s, working in every aspect of entertainment - ballet, drama, film, musical, opera and revue - as well as in interior decoration and textile design. His lavish, painterly and romantic designs informed by period styles, were perfectly in tune with his times and earned him an international reputation. By 1960, however, Messel’s style had become unfashionable, having no sympathy with the new 'kitchen sink' school of theatre. He increasingly concentrated on his non-theatrical painting and designing and eventually retired to the Carribean, where he began a new career designing and building highly idiosyncratic luxury villas.