Form and function

Jewelry was used for a number of reasons:

* Currency, a rich display and storage,
* Use functional (like the clasps, pins and loops)
* Symbolism (to show membership or status)
* Protection (in the form of amulets and magical wards), [3]
* Artistic Display

Most cultures have at some point had a practice of keeping large amounts of wealth stored in the form of jewelry. Many cultures around marriage dowry in the form of jewelry, or creating jewelry as a way to store or display pieces. Alternatively, the jewellery was used as currency or trade good; an example being the use of slave pearls. [Edit]

Many jewelry, such as pins and loops for purely functional origin points, but has evolved into decorative objects as their functional requirement reduced. [4]

Jewelry can also be symbolic of a group, as in the case of Christian crucifixes or Jewish Star of David, or statute, as in the case of chains of office, or the Western practice of married people wearing a wedding ring.

Wearing amulets and devotion medals to offer protection or ward off the evil is common in some cultures, they may take the form of symbols (like ankh), stones, plants, animals, body parts (such as the Khamsa), or glyphs (As stylized versions verse from the Throne of Islamic art). [5]

Although the artistic display was clearly a function of the jewellery from the outset other roles described above tend to have primacy. [Edit] Only at the end of the 19th century with the work of masters such Peter Carl Faberge and Rene Lalique, that art began to take precedence over the function and wealth. [Edit] This trend has continued in modern times, developed by artists such as Robert Lee Morris and Ed Levin.