Wearing Charms and Charm Bracelets – a History

For thousands of years men and women have been wearing charms as amulets to protect them from evil spirits or for good fortune and riches. The use of charms attached to bracelets seems to have been started by the ancient Egyptians who used them as signs of their faith and to take with them to the next world so that the gods would name them and assign them their correct status.

The early Christians in Rome wore a charm fashioned as a fish to identify themselves to each other. In the Dark Ages, charms were worn for religious identification and to indicate the family of the bearer. In the Middle Ages, knights wore them to guard themselves in battle and the common people also carried charms. All through the Renaissance their use faded, principally by the more affluent classes, as people became better educated and much less prone to believe in superstitions. Nevertheless the less knowledgeable poorer classes still believed in charms as protection against wickedness and to give them good luck.

Wearing charms was revived in Great Britain by Queen Victoria who wore a gold charm bracelet with lockets containing pictures of her family. This had an immense impact on charm bracelet wearing by the general population who began to wear them, not as amulets, but as decorative objects. Family crests and lockets became the fashion of the day. Subsequent to the conclusion of World War 2 there was a massive outburst of charm wearing as servicemen brought home gems and beads to their sweetheart from far flung places of the world. Craftsmen in America continued the trend and began to produce charms and gold charm jewelry. From that time wearing charm bracelets has continued to thrive.

At present a broad selection of pendants. rings and bracelets are offered with bracelets being the most prevalent. The precious metals, silver and gold, are ordinarily used though some people favor bracelets made from beads or seed pearls with gold or silver charms. Bracelets vary in cost from less than $100 to many thousands of dollars and are therefore within everyone’s finances. There are numerous kinds of religious charms portraying saints and a vast array of charms depicting animals and objects including hearts, cupids, crosses, dolphins etc. One of the most popular are angel charms.

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