Straight Pin (c. 500 BCE): Art, History and Details

Straight Pin (c. 500 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This gold straight pin is topped with a red glass bead set in a finial. Braided gold wire and granulated triangles surround the bead. Tiny spheres forming more triangles decorate the underside of the finial, some perhaps lost. The pin is gently twisted below the finial. Although it appears to be garnet, the bead in this pin was determined to be glass after close examination by two gemologists from the Natural History Museum.

Object facts

• Title: Straight Pin
• Date: c. 500 BCE
• Culture: Etruscan
• Type: Jewelry
• Technique: gold and glass
• Dimensions: Overall: 6.4 cm (2 1/2 in.)
• Collection: GR - Etruscan
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1978.25

A detail from the museum

This pin was likely used to pin back women’s hair.

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Max Ratner

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Annual Report for 1978." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 66, no. 5 (1979).

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.