Patriotic jewelry During crucial periods for Poland, patriotic feelings were readily manifested through national dress, songs, or even appropriately decorated objects. The latter were of great variety - from "national" bows through buttons, sashes, snuff boxes, pins, to rings, brooches and watches. It was these small items decorating an outfit, made only sometimes of precious metals, that became known as patriotic jewelry. It is accepted that it was decorated mainly with mourning motifs - chains, wreaths, crowns of thorns and even coffins. However, this was the case only during the period of increased repression - before and after the uprisings, when there were waves of arrests and seizures. Mourning-patriotic ornaments and costumes were worn in memory of the fallen, imprisoned and emigrants. In times of awakening hope, figures of national heroes or the eagle motif were used. The first items that can be described as patriotic jewelry come from the period of the Bar Confederation (1768-72). Later they appear in large numbers during the period of the Great Sejm and reports of the Kosciuszko Uprising. In the 19th century, a particular flourish of this type of ornamentation occurred during the broader period of the January Uprising. Patriotic jewelry was eagerly worn in the twentieth century, before and during the First World War. During the interwar period, it was an expression of the owner's patriotic and "pro-state" attitude. During the Second World War, the most severe repression by the occupying forces was threatened for its possession. It was encountered among soldiers and refugees in the Middle East and Great Britain. Also those imprisoned by the Third Reich and the Soviet Union made items of this nature. The last patriotic jewelry appeared during the revival of the national spirit in the early 1980s and is inextricably linked to the era of "Solidarity." Source: museumwp.pl, Marcin Ochman
