This year we are celebrating 100 years of suffrage or women’s right to vote….You really hadn’t realized why I’ve been wearing a white coat, had you?!
I recently visited the Frick Museum’s exhibit “Maker & Muse: Women and Early Twentieth Century Art Jewelry” and was reminded how many different ways women have been agitating for suffrage. I really enjoyed this fantastic exhibit that runs through May 2020.
I’ve been wearing a pendent with an iconic female image, Marianne, who is the personification of liberty, equality, and fraternity for the French. What I hadn’t realized is that I have also been wearing a pair of handmade French glasses with the symbolic colors Green, White, and Violet. These were the colors of the Suffragists’ jewelry. These colors may have stood for Give Women the Vote.
Female jewelry designers were out of the box in the early twentieth century's Art Nouveau period with their jeweled images of fierce mermaids and other exotic creatures. This was jewelry not to show off your wealth as it had been for the Victorians....It was more about a woman’s intrinsic worth. I, the girl from The Glass Capital of the World (Toledo, Ohio), especially loved the Lalique glass sculpted pieces.
As I get older, I wear less jewelry. Instead, my glasses have become my face jewelry. I will now think of all the brave and creative women who came before me. In the spirit of my green, white, and violet glasses….Don’t forget to vote!
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