Just why a woman might want a cockerel or lizard clutching her bosom is a mystery. For a start, what’s wrong with a violet or a rose? Pointless questions. Insects, birds, mammals and reptiles have been used as motifs in jewellery since Cleopatra became obsessed with the scarab beetle. Platinum and diamond swans, gold and aquamarine snakes and dragons, pearl and enamel dragonflies, your favourite dog with diamond eyes and ruby tongue — the possibilities are endless. And they have an endless fascination for jewellers. In the late 19th century, when the great jewellery houses were being founded in Paris and St Petersburg, wealthy women loved whimsical, amusing little bibelots to lighten the heaviness of their serious — and seriously expensive — status jewellery. And the jewellers were happy to meet their needs.No idea was too kitsch or vulgar, provided the gold setting and the stones were expensive enough for them to charge thousands of times a workman’s annual pay packet merely to bring pleasure to their pampered customers. Cartier (whose famous panther brooches were adored by the Duchess of Windsor), Tiffany, Boucheron, Van Cleef & Arpels: they all made a considerable proportion of their profits from little furry animals, ethereal butterflies and the ubiquitous hummingbird.

The whole menagerie was more or less put back in the cage in the 1970s, when young women decided that real jewels were stuffy and old-ladyish. In any case, they preferred the clean, simple lines of modern design. But maybe the animal world is just about due for a revival, now that fashion is getting formal again.

The Jewelled Menagerie by Suzanne Tennenbaum and Janet Zapata (Thames & Hudson £19.95)

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