Ball chatelaine

In Poland, the popular name for this highly original object was szatelenka – from the French chatelaine (which means: wife of the lord of a castle). It was known already in the seventeenth century when women’s robes did not have pockets and the mistress of a large household tied onto her belt buckle (usually on assorted chains) various small items – keys, scissors, a watch - useful in her everyday busy life. Other hold-alls carried specialised equipment for women, e.g. for embroidering; for men they were more massive, with longer chains and, as a rule, with a watch and key attached. The presented unique hold-all, purchased from a private collection, is a variant pinned onto a ball gown and outfitted with a tiny notebook containing several white celluloid pages for jotting down the names of partners planned for successive dances, a sheath for a small pencil, a mirror, a glass bottle for a few drops of perfume, and a tiny bag for several coins. Such szatelenki became particularly popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth century: they were made out of silver and sometimes gold or metals imitating them.