Brooch Pin's Patent and Manufacture

Brooch Pin's Patent and Manufacture

The nineteenth-century Brooch Pin may have been a conscious classical revival, influenced by increasing museum display of and publication of articles on ancient fibulae. The first U.S. patent for a coiled-wire Pin of this type granted to Walter Hunt in 1849 is significantly entitled "Dress-Pin," even though other patents had been issued for "Safety Pins." The inventor claimed durability, beauty, convenience, and injury protection, in that order. Only beginning in the late 1870s did other inventors add the guard that protected the wearer fully. Crucially, they also developed machinery for automating the production of the Brooch Pins. By 1914, American factories alone were making over 1.33 billion Safety Pins annually at a cost of $0.007 each, a stunning example of the industrial order's democratization of an ancient and medieval luxury product. The maverick economist Thorstein Veblen affixed his watch to his clothing with a Safety Pin to show his indifference to conspicuous consumption-a gesture of reverse snobbery later followed more drastically by the punk movement's use of Safety Pins as piercing jewelry from the 1970s onward.