The idea of cufflinks dates back to the early 1500’s when men of importance began to wear shirts with ruffled wristbands and tied them together with strings. This continued for many years until the early 1700’s when “sleeve buttons” made of glass linked together with gold or silver chains arrived. In the middle of that century the glass buttons gave way to those made of jewels – very often diamonds.
And so arrived the cufflinks that we know and wear today, apart from the fact that when the industrial revolution began it became possible to manufacture cufflinks using much less expensive materials, and so the “common man” could afford to buy them instead of them being restricted to the wealthy.
But you could be forgiven for thinking that “Surely, nobody wears cufflinks today? Everyone has shirts with button cuffs”. Well, to some extent that is true, yet millions of men do still wear double cuff shirts with cufflinks: just search online for “cufflinks” and you will find thousands upon thousands of designs! Men who like to dress smartly and be respected by others will always wear cufflinks.
As cufflink designers and manufacturers, at Wimbledon Cufflink Company we produce designs that are formal and get men noticed for all the right reasons. So, we produce silver cufflinks and gold-plated cufflinks in the UK. We do also produce a pair in 925 Sterling Silver for wear on those very important formal occasions when you need to look as smart as possible and yet with a restrained design.
The Heritage Collection
Many of our customers love our Heritage Collection of silver cufflinks which celebrate the history of the four countries in the UK in many different ways. For example, we have the English Lion silver cufflink. This is the king of beasts and was adopted by royalty way back in the 11th century. We also have St George and the Dragon. If you are Scottish, why not buy a pair with the Scottish Lion symbol?
If you are an American, you might choose the Washington cufflinks depicting the head of the man himself – George Washington. Or perhaps the American Eagle?
In addition, we produce gold-plated cufflinks in the UK in a wide choice of patterns. One of those is the Three English Lions which, as it is the symbol of the English football team, has been selling spectacularly well in the last few weeks, as you might imagine.
For the Irish, we have the Shamrock in gold on a splendid blue background, and – as you might also guess – for the Welsh we’ve got you covered with the Welsh Dragon, the battle standard of no less a man than King Arthur.
Those are only a small selection of our silver and gold cufflinks. There are many, many more.