cap hook
Illustration — Silver cap hook with incised ornament, diameter 12.9 mm, c. 1500–1700 • Illustration — Portrait of Arthur, Prince of Wales c. 1500 wearing a hat with an enseigne badge of Saint John the Baptist and two small rosette-shaped cap hooks A cap hook is a decorative hat ornament fashionable from the Late Middle Ages through the Tudor period, used to pin up or decorate men's hat brims.
Also recorded as hat hook · hat-hook
cap hook
All rights reserved, Tom Redmayne, 2012-01-05 09:17:24 · The Portable Antiquities Scheme/ The Trustees of the British Museum · https: Catalog: https: archive copy at the Wayback Machine Artefact: https: finds.org · CC BY-SA 2.0
- Field
- jewelry · hook · dress hook
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Illustration — Silver cap hook with incised ornament, diameter 12.9 mm, c. 1500–1700 • Illustration — Portrait of Arthur, Prince of Wales c. 1500 wearing a hat with an enseigne badge of Saint John the Baptist and two small rosette-shaped cap hooks A cap hook is a decorative hat ornament fashionable from the Late Middle Ages through the Tudor period, used to pin up or decorate men's hat brims.
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wikidata · Q28605779 · wikipedia · Cap hook
In this article
Usage
Usage
Cap hooks were made of gold, silver, or silver-gilt base metal, and might be decorated with jewels or enamelling. Cap hooks could be purely decorative or could carry religious or symbolic meaning. The latter form are called enseignes and may be an evolution of the medieval pilgrim badge.
In the early 16th century, it became fashionable for men to wear multiple small cap hooks alongside a larger hat jewel on the turned-up brims of their hats.
Study and identification
Study and identification
Cap hooks were little studied until the UK Treasure Act of 1996 required the examination and assessment of such small objects when made of precious metals. A seminal cross-disciplinary study of silver-gilt hooks in the Journal of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2002 differentiates cap hooks from other types of dress hooks. Cap hooks have a hook behind the ornament, where it is invisible in use. This makes distinguishing cap hooks from buttons or other types of ornaments in portraits difficult. Cap hooks are also elusive in written records, possibly because such ornaments were referred to as "buttons" regardless of their method of attachment. • Illustration — Silver-gilt rosette cap hook, ca. 1480–1580 • Illustration — Silver-gilt cap hook in the form of a bird, ca. 1485–1600 • Illustration — Silver-gilt cap hook, hook now missing, post-Medieval
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- “Cap hook”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
authority record
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q28605779: cap hook
General reference · Wikidata
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1- dress hookTerminology
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The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 16 August 2026.
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