Jewellery & accessories

A mannequin dressed in an elaborate Renaissance-style stage costume stands in a large Perspex-fronted display case . On the rear wall a small screen is showing a scene from the opera Lucrezia Borgia where Dame Joan Sutherland is wearing the same costume.

Dressing Joan Sutherland

One of the most spectacular costumes on display in the exhibition The People’s House: Sydney Opera House at 50 is an extraordinary Renaissance dress designed by Kristian Fredrikson and worn by Dame Joan Sutherland in the part of the notorious Lucrezia Borgia

Keeping cool

Shading the face, fanning a fire into a blaze or cooling food, shooing away insects, conveying social status, even passing discreet romantic messages - the use of the fan goes far beyond the creation of a breeze

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Baubles, brooches & beads

We wear jewellery as articles of dress and fashion and for sentimental reasons – as tokens of love, as symbols of mourning, as souvenirs of travel

Celluloid doll wearing garment pinned with variety of patriotic badges.
WW1

A patriotic fundraising memento

This tiny celluloid doll, just 10 centimetres in height and clothed in panels of ribbon, is showing her age

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Keeping time

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries watches were designed to carried on the person, attached to a waist hook, looped over a belt or as part of a chatelaine in the case of women

Three hatpins c1900

Forgotten objects – the hatpin

Rarely seen or used today, hatpins were once an essential item for the fashionable lady

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Close to the heart

Expressions of love and endearment have long been embodied in keepsakes or jewellery worn or held close to the body