Studio: international art (38.1906)

Austrian Peasant Ornaments

Styria, the chief place of pilgrimage in Austria, to
which many thousands of pilgrims yearly make their
way, brought many foreign ornaments into the land,
for the peasants as well as the upper classes were lavish
in their votive offerings, and many fine examples are
to be found in the little church. In Styria there
were valuable silver mines (which, though they have
ceased being worked for about two hundred years, are

thought to be by no
means exhausted),
and this perhaps
accounts for the
fact that in this
district many an-
cient silver orna-
ments have been
found. At the
beginning of the
nineteenth cen-
tury, from 1800-
1840, an attempt
was made to make
filigree ornaments
of cast-iron, and
not without success
from an artistic
point of view.
Those specimens
I have seen in the
Styrisches Gewer-
be-Museum at
Graz, are singularly
delicate in form
and composition.
They were popular
on account of
their comparative
cheapness, but the
art has quite died
out, and no at-

tempts are being
made to revive it,
nor would it per-
haps be well to do
so. Many orna-
ments of this character were presented by the
peasants as votive offerings at Maria Zell.

Love tokens usually took the form of the

double-eagle, the dove or the heart. Such

objects were exchanged by lovers and worn
as charms. The heart, everywhere a symbol of
devotion, was locked by a little key, so that
only the possessor of the key could obtain

access to it. The significance of this token

FIG. 19. SILVER FILIGREE
HAIRPIN FROM SALZBURG
(Museum fiirVolkskun.de, Vienna)

FIG. 20. SILVER FILIGREE NECKLET AND PENDANT
FROM STYRIA

(Styrisches Gewerbe Museum, Graz)

is well expressed in an old German love ballad,
which runs :—

“ Du bist min, ich bin din,

Dess solt Du gewiss sin.

Du bist beslozzen
In minen Herzen
Verloren ist das Sluzzelin
Du muost immer darinnen sin.”

Such trinkets were generally formed of beaten
metal, and these rough expressions of tenderness
and affection played a prominent part in the love
history of olden times. In Tyrol, Styria, and other
provinces at the present day filigree rings, hearts
and doves can be bought at any shop, but these
are, of course, manufactured wholesale for all to buy,
whereas in former times the lover gloried in his
work, and it was part and parcel of himself that he
gave with the charm which was to protect his
“ Liebchen ” from harm.

In Carniola and some other provinces the
women’s belts are formed either of metal chains
with ornamental clasps at stated distances, or of
strips of leather bound together with metal clasps.
Sometimes the former are of silver-gilt; very rarely
of solid silver. In some the clasps are engraved, but
they are seldom set with stones. Laibach, with the
district around, was at one time famous for belts,
as also was Old Sterzing in Tyrol. But the Tyrolese
belt differs widely from that of Carniola; it is in-
variably of leather mounted in metal engraved with
some decorative design, with a round filigree clasp
fastened with a chain. At the side is another
round clasp of different design, from which hung

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