Spangle
Also: oe
A spangle is a small metal disc sewn to cloth, the usual English word for what we now call a sequin from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth century.
A spangle is a small disc of metal, usually silver, gold or copper alloy, sewn to cloth for decoration. It was the usual English word for such discs from the sixteenth century to the early nineteenth, when sequin gradually replaced it. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries spangles were also called oes.
How was a spangle made?
Accounts differ. The Dreamstress describes wire coiled around a rod, cut into rings and hammered flat, which leaves a visible join. Historic Jamestowne says spangles were cut from thin sheet metal. Some writers keep spangle for coiled discs and sequin for punched ones, though the rule is not applied consistently.
Where can you see one?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art catalogs a coif of 1600 to 1630 worked with silk and metal thread and spangles; the Cleveland Museum of Art lists the materials of a coif of the late 1500s as including sequins. Same objects, different words.
Sources
- Terminology: Sequins vs. Spangles (& their history in fashion). The Dreamstress
- Spangles. Historic Jamestowne
- Coif, 1600–30, 64.101.1242. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Coif, late 1500s, 1934.206. Cleveland Museum of Art
See also
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