Brooch - Order of the Garter

Maker: Unknown, Scotland
Date: ca. 1865
Material: white and grey agate and base metal
Size: 45 millimeters circumference
Provenance: Adelicia to her daughter Pauline Acklen Lockett to her niece Pauline Acklen Landis to her daughter Pauline Landis Grizzard to her daughter Linda Grizzard Tiffany by gift to Belmont Mansion Association.
1999.09.01 by gift from Linda Grizzard Tiffany

Agate and metal brooch patterned after the Order of the Garter Pin. This Scottish circle pin/pendant is comprised of 9 irregular domed wedge shaped white to grey Scottish banded agates flush set in base metal in a circular pattern. The pin weighs 14.0 penny weights, closes with a "C" clasp, and has a tube hinge. It can be worn as a pin or pendant.

The brooch is patterned after the emblem of the Order of the Garter which pictures a garter looped and knotted in a circle. The Order is the highest honor of chivalric service. In Queen Victoria’s reign, membership was awarded based on elections which Victoria rarely held and women besides the Sovereign were not permitted to be members.[1] Adelicia’s possession and frequent use, shown in the worn quality of the broach, exemplifies the fascination, shown in her dress and fashion, with English royalty and the reimagining of medieval chivalry prominent in the age of Queen Victoria. Victorians often took their romanticized ideas of history and directly reflected these ideas in their clothing.[2] Though Adelicia certainly had no connection to the Order, this emblem certainly represented the Victorian interest in feudalism and chivalric revival they so often connected to their own society

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Sherry Male
Grace M. Allen

[1] Stephanie Trigg, Shame and Honor: A Vulgar History of the Order of the Garter (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 40.
[2] Inga Bryden, “All Dressed Up: Revivalism and the Fashion for Arthur in Victorian Culture,” Arthuriana 21 no. 2 (Summer 2011): 29.