Cap or Bonnet Pin 1938

Curator: Immediately striking! There’s such a delicate, almost mournful quality in the faded pastels. Editor: Indeed. We’re looking at “Cap or Bonnet Pin,” a design on paper using watercolor and pencil, created in 1938 by John H. Tercuzzi. The pearls depicted offer the same sensation as you mention: a reserved aesthetic, but the gold brings light to them, the pearls shine due to this combination. Curator: Pearls, aren’t they always entangled with narratives of purity and also loss, in the cultural psyche? Given the date, just before the war, perhaps this pin embodies a yearning for a certain type of feminine presentation that felt threatened. Editor: I wonder if it speaks to class. Jewelry has, across many cultures and eras, signaled one's position in society, and a cap or bonnet pin adorned with what appear to be pearls suggests a desire for upward mobility during a period of economic anxiety for many. Moreover, accessories dictate gender codes as pearls themselves might reflect conservative values about women's roles. Curator: I see pearls, too, as embodiments of accumulated emotion and experience. The shape recalls tears—precious tears, captured and immortalized. The arrangement on this design, so meticulously drawn, speaks to a hope for transforming sorrow into something beautiful. Editor: The stylized floral component and golden rods offer that transformation you mention—a kind of hopeful modernism. I appreciate how Tercuzzi situated a traditional symbol like the pearl within a slightly more streamlined, almost Art Deco-inflected design. Curator: Yes! There's a negotiation happening between past and future, sorrow and…perhaps not joy, but certainly elegance. It invites us to reflect on what aspects of femininity or beauty traditions we choose to carry forward. Editor: Right, what aspects and for whom? This piece, as a design, presents potential, and a space where identity is not yet concretized, and opens considerations regarding to whom access to such potential is granted. Thanks for your time. Curator: Thank you, and my pleasure. What a compelling encapsulation of beauty, history, and identity we’ve just touched on.