I came across a new phrase today, or name, or whatever you might call it: European Charm Bracelet. Now, the name obviously is fairly self explanatory in that it refers to charm bracelets which are “European”. But then aren’t Italian charms also European? Very confusing. Actually European charms, and European Charm Bracelets are the name given to a certain style of charm bracelet which presumably they are wearing throughout Paris Milan and London these days. A Danish company claims to have invented this style of charm bracelet and charm as late as 1976, and whilst that predates yours truly its really quite recent in the world of jewelry and especially in the world of charms.
So what are European Charm Bracelets I hear you all ask? Well they are charm bracelets made up from beads. Not to be confused with bead bracelets I should say, and please see my earlier posts on seed bead bracelets etc if you are interested in them! No, these beads tend to be made from silver and occasionally made from gold and other metals with the odd bit of ceramic or stone thrown in for a little sparkle. There is no reason why you couldn’t use wooden beads or any other type of bead for that matter, but from my limited research only silver and precious metal charms seem to be associated with European Charm Bracelets, how very European!
As beads all these little silver charms have a hole in the middle and are thus added to a string style bracelet (you can get solid silver string style bracelets quite readily nowadays). Obviously you should know by now that I’m not a big fan of this type of charm bracelet – read my earlier comments on Pandora charm bracelets for example. That said, a charm bracelet is a charm bracelet and they are all pretty damn good in my books, by why call them European? I think we should fight back, where’s the stars and stripes charm bracelet when you need it? So the gauntlet is down, for any budding young American entrepreneurs (damn these Europeans, they even change our vocab) to invent a new style of charm bracelet, an American Charm Bracelet…