Tassels

A tassel is a ball-shaped bunch of plaited or otherwise entangled threads from which at one end protrudes a cord on which the tassel is hung, and which may have loose, dangling threads at the other end. more...

Tassels are normally decorative elements, and as such one often finds them attached, usually along the bottom hem, to garments, curtains, or other hangings; and to mortarboards.

The word 'tassel' comes from the Latin "tassau" which meant a clasp (as for the neck of a garment), but also later served to denote string ties, which were later terminated in increasingly elaborate tassels. Today, tassels are found on mortarboards during graduation ceremonies, but possibly also upon the shoes of the men there, really the only other socially acceptable appearance of a tassel among men today. That the tassel is really a universal ornament is seen in versions in vertually every culture around the globe, and even as the 'silk' on a corn stalk, on the breast of a tom turkey, on the tasseled crab, and the "pine cone and tassel" is the state flower of the American state of Maine.

Passementerie

In this craft, a tassel is primarily an ornament, and was, of course, at first the casual termination of a cord to prevent unraveling as its ends which were tied in knots with the remainder of the cord hanging as shreds of it. As time went on, various peoples developed greater or lesser variations of this, until by the time of 16th century France, there was constituted the first Guild of Passementiers who formulated and documented the art of passementerie (pronounced: pahs/mahn/TREE). This art form had the Tassel as its primary expression, but also included Fringes (applied as opposed to integral), Ornamental Cords, Galloons, Pompons, Rosettes, and Gimps as other forms. Tassels, Pompons, and Rosettes are point ornaments; the others are linear ornaments. The parts of a tassel are basically, from top to bottom:

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