Earrings

All women in Normandy wore earrings, like women everywhere else in France. But the earrings worn in Normandy before the 19th century were largely the same pattern as elsewhere; there was nothing distinctively regional about them. Sometime in the 19th century the silversmiths started to make them in designs which matched the traditional crosses.

These earrings are made in the same way as a croix de Rouen. They have a base of sheet metal, pierced and set with small rock crystals around a central conical mount. They were bought for £1 2s at the International Exhibition in London in 1872, and are unlikely to be much earlier than that.