Silver filigree vase with tripod base. The vase of the bouquet holder is shaped like a pentagon. Each panel is adorned with filigree designs of a central stylized leaf surrounded by rectangular boarders and thin metal zigzagging strands. These straight panels connect to rounded-arched panels that bulge outward. They are formed with a palmette surrounded by thin members of interlinking silver threads. The base is connected to spherical assemblage of alternating leaves and flowers. Below this section, a chain attaches to a pin. This pin could be inserted through a small hole in the vase to secure flowers in the bouquet holder. A ring on a chain also connects at this point. The ring would allow one to wear it from the finger or attach it to a chatelaine at the waist. The handle of the bouquet holder also serves as a tripod stand. Three curved panels spring out, each with a foot at the end for balance. The form of the legs recall a blade of grass, and are elaborately ornamented with an interlacing diamond and dots pattern. The ring around the top of the legs could be slid down in order to secure the legs together, creating a straight handled bouquet holder.
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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.
