Gilded brass vase with silver beads and mother of pearl handle. The vase of the holder is elaborately designed with open metalwork in five eighteenth-century style repeats. Small cartouches are combined with ‘S' and ‘C' scrolls to create the sides of the vase. Within each section is a curving band of seven silver beads strung vertically on convex wires. The base of the vase is formed by five ornate, textured acanthus leaves atop a crown like ring. This design is typical of the Rococo Revival style popular in the nineteenth century. Snake chains attach a floral pin and ring to the bottom of the bowl. The pin is meant to be inserted through the vase, piercing the stems to secure a posy in the holder. The ring connected to the other chain would allow the bouquet holder to be worn dangling from the finger or could be attached to a chatelaine worn at the waist to free the lady's hands while dancing. The vase portion of the bouquet holder connects to the handle at a gilded-brass sheet neck band that is embossed with flowers and leaves on a diagonal-line background. The spindle handle is made from a luminescent mother of pearl. It has been turned, creating rings and bands as it tapers to a point. Mother of pearl handles retained a cool feeling longer than some other materials; because of this, they were said to be appropriate for warmer months.
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Flowers used for personal adornment were a popular, almost mandatory, fashion accessory in the nineteenth century. Small bouquets, called nosegays, posies, or tussie mussies were carried by debutantes, matrons, and girls, and they were a popular gift in the mid to late 1800s among friends and suitors. They were typically created in concentric rings of flowers, tightly wound together, and were often tied with ribbon or placed in a bouquet holder depending on the tastes and fashions. By the 1830s carrying small bouquets of flowers in decorative holders was an established fashion accessory of the upper class and royalty of Europe. These small accessories, also known as posy holders, ‘porte-bouquets’, and ‘bouquetiers’ were both decorative as well as useful. By providing a water source in the bottom of the receptacle, they were able to keep the flowers fresh throughout an occasion, and they also protected the wearer’s gloves or clothing from being stained by the plant pigments. Queen Victoria helped popularize the bouquet holder, and she is seen holding one in her portrait “Queen Victoria at the Drury Lane Theatre, November 1837” painted by E.T. Parris. When the fashion of carrying hand bouquets in decorative holders caught the fancy of the wealthy and middle class, holders were copied and mass produced in a variety of sizes, materials, and embellishments. During the second half of the nineteenth century, holders might be commissioned or purchased from the stock at a jeweler or florist shop. Few were made in the United States, instead they were usually imported from Europe and Asia. They were often given as a commemorative memento of historic encounters or events by the royalty and courts of Europe, but they were also used to celebrate and commemorate important, though less prestigious, events of the wealthy and middle class. Bouquet holders reached the peak of their popularity between the 1830s and 1880s, but it began to dwindle as bouquets of long-stemmed flowers (the latest horticultural development) loosely tied with ribbons surpassed the posy bouquet style. They were not totally out of fashion until the “Roaring Twenties,” when such objects became regarded as trivial and useless. The diversity of styles and mechanisms of bouquet holders is evidence of their longevity as a fashion accessory.
