Belt and Hanger thumbnail 1
Belt and Hanger thumbnail 2
Image of Gallery in South Kensington
On display at V&A South Kensington
Jewellery, Rooms 91, The William and Judith Bollinger Gallery

Belt and Hanger

1650 - 1750 (made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

This is a traditional marriage belt made in South Germany in the late Seventeenth or early Eighteenth Century. Such items became fashionable in artistic circles during the second half of the Nineteenth Century: unusual hand-made pieces of folk jewellery were considered by many to have a greater spontaneity and interest compared with the precision and repetitiveness of conventional machine-made jewellery. Rossetti encouraged this trend with the jewellery he included in his paintings.

Jane Morris, known as Janey, was the wife of the artist, designer and socialist William Morris. She was often painted by the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and in his painting Astarte Syriaca, of 1877, she is wearing this girdle.

Some of Jane Morris's jewels were bequeathed to the V&A by her daughter May in 1938, including this girdle.


Object details

Categories
Object type
Materials and techniques
Silver, cast and pierced
Brief description
Silver belt and hanger, made in the late 17th or early 18th Century, South Germany.
Physical description
A silver girdle, composed of twenty-nine links decorated with floral ornament, a circular buckle and an attachment with three suspension loops.
Dimensions
  • Length: 104.1cm
  • Width: 2.5cm
  • Height: 36.5cm
  • Depth: 2.1cm
  • Of buckle diameter: 5.3cm
Credit line
Bequeathed by May Morris
Object history
The belt was worn by Janey Morris in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's painting Astarte Syriaca (1877).
Subject depicted
Summary
This is a traditional marriage belt made in South Germany in the late Seventeenth or early Eighteenth Century. Such items became fashionable in artistic circles during the second half of the Nineteenth Century: unusual hand-made pieces of folk jewellery were considered by many to have a greater spontaneity and interest compared with the precision and repetitiveness of conventional machine-made jewellery. Rossetti encouraged this trend with the jewellery he included in his paintings.

Jane Morris, known as Janey, was the wife of the artist, designer and socialist William Morris. She was often painted by the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and in his painting Astarte Syriaca, of 1877, she is wearing this girdle.

Some of Jane Morris's jewels were bequeathed to the V&A by her daughter May in 1938, including this girdle.
Bibliographic reference
Collection
Accession number
M.34-1939

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Record createdSeptember 1, 2003
Record URL
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