A Few Adornments Trivia Quiz

The wing of this little gem-encrusted ruby-throated hummingbird bird is on a small spring, so it bounces around while being worn, imitating the movement of a real bird. The blue feathers, the yellow beak and the red throat are ceramic, the green is tourmaline, and the breast has small diamonds embedded in the gold.

It is a brooch, meaning that it has a clasp on the back which allows one to pin it onto clothing - usually in the shoulder area.

My mother had pierced ears, and my father had the gems from a large brooch inherited from his mother reset into some more contemporary pieces. The blue stones are sapphires, encircled by small diamonds. Each earring has a small post on its back (the stud), which is placed through the hole in the wearer's ear, and secured with a clip on the back. Stud earrings sit firmly against the earlobe, unlike some of the others shown in the collection.

This piece is intended to be worn in conjunction with the matching stud earrings. A lavalier is a necklace with a pendant hanging from a chain. This particular one has a rather more chunky gold chain than is usual, and is also shorter than many. The style was popularised by the Duchesse de la Vallière in the 17th century.

The pendant portion of this piece is actually designed so that it can be removed and worn as a brooch.

The box in which this necklace is stored has a pencil annotation indicating that it, and the cameo brooch, came to my mother from her mother, who was given them by her father's stepsister. Wherever she got them from, it was clearly over a century ago, at a time when ivory was still prized in jewelry. If you ignore the fact that elephants had to die to provide the ivory, it is exquisitely carved, with the large elephant featured in the pendant portion replicated in miniature as beads around the rest of the necklace.

This brooch has been passed down in the family along with the ivory necklace, but they would probably not be worn together, as a brooch on the shoulder is expected to be the focal point of the jewelry, and a large necklace would interfere with that.

Cameo jewelry features a small carved design set against a differently-coloured background. In this case, the carved portion is ivory - and its age can be seen by the brown discolouration that is apparent in a couple of places. The brown oval backing is a piece of polished shell (with nacre visible on the back), and a gold hoop keeps it all in place.

Hair bows are decorative additions to a hair clip, which is attached to the hair in some way. It may be holding the hair in a fixed position (for instance, pulling long hair back from the face) or it may be positioned so as to let the hair swing freely.

They can also be attached to something elastic that is placed around the hair to gather it into a ponytail or plait, or at the freely-swinging bottom of a plait. Hair bows are more commonly seen on children than adults, but an exception is the kind of specialty bow shown here - it is definitely seasonal, and only useful around Christmas!

Hoop earrings are, as their name describes them, circular items designed to be worn hanging from the ear. They are usually worn with pierced ears, so that the hoop can be sitting inside the ear as it hangs, but it is possible to find hoop earrings with a clasp attachment.

The hoop can range in size, from a small circle that barely hangs clear of the earlobe to a large one that dangles near the shoulders. These are on the large side.

Here is another bit of playful jewelry, definitely for seasonal wear! Unlike some of the pieces in this quiz, it is just costume jewelry, to be worn for a bit of fun, and has virtually no actual value. It will not be passed down through the generations.

The green wreath lets you know that this is Christmas, and the gingerbread man represents holiday treats. The photo doesn't show that there are flashing coloured lights at the end of each limb, so when turned on you get an impression of Christmas lights - red and yellow on his hands, green and white on his feet.

My father's mother was clearly a fan of sapphires! This piece was created for me, to rehouse some of the stones from the same original that produced the sapphire and diamond pieces. There are three sapphires, set as the centre of three flowers on a branch of silver with two leaves in view. I never have worked out what kind of flower the jeweler who designed it had in mind.

As the name suggests (coming from the Latin verb 'pendere', meaning to hang down), pendant earrings have a part which dangles from the ear and moves around as the head moves. They can also be called drop earrings. This pair have lattice-work balls hanging on a rigid stem. The tops have a small decorative plate to make the ear attachment decorative, not just functional.