Medal Bars, Clasps and Miniatures: What Goes Where and When

September 4, 2026

Medal terminology trips people up because the same words do different jobs. "Bar" is the worst offender: it means two entirely separate things depending on where it sits, and confusing them makes a listing or a display look wrong to anyone who knows.

Bar, meaning a clasp on the ribbon

A small metal bar fixed across the ribbon of a medal, usually carrying a name or a date. It does one of two jobs:

Naming a specific campaign, battle or theatre covered by that medal. One medal, several possible clasps, and the clasps tell you where the recipient actually served.
Marking a repeat award of the same decoration — because most decorations are not awarded twice as two medals, but as one medal with a bar for each subsequent award.

This is where a great deal of the interest in a medal group lives. Two people can hold the same medal and their clasps can tell completely different stories.

Bar, meaning the thing the medals hang from

The mounting bar: the metal bar behind a group of medals that holds them in order and lets them be pinned to the chest as a single unit. Nothing to do with clasps, and it carries no information of its own.

When someone says a group is "on a bar", they usually mean this. When they say a medal "has a bar", they usually mean a clasp. Context is doing a lot of work in this vocabulary.

Full size and miniature

Miniatures are not replicas or substitutes — they are a parallel set, worn on different occasions:

Full size — worn with day dress uniform, on parade, and at Remembrance.
Miniatures — worn with evening dress, including mess dress and civilian black tie. Roughly half the size, correct in every detail, and mounted the same way in the same order.

Wearing full-size medals with evening dress is one of the most common errors in photographs, and it is instantly visible to anyone who knows the convention. Miniatures are freely available and entirely legitimate to buy.

Ribbon bars

A third thing again: a small block of ribbon worn without any medal attached, used on working and service dress where full medals would be impractical. Same ribbons, same order, no medals.

These are cheap, widely available and perfectly proper to own and display. They are also the sensible option if you want to complete a uniform for display without acquiring the medals themselves.

Buying and collecting

Named medals are worth far more. Many British medals are impressed or engraved around the rim with the recipient's name, number and unit. That turns a medal into a documented individual history, and it is the single biggest factor in value.
Check the rim first, before the face. A polished or re-named rim is a serious problem, and re-naming is the main form of fraud in this area.
Clasps get added. A medal with a scarce clasp is worth more than the same medal without, which creates an obvious incentive. Original clasps are fitted in specific ways and later additions usually show.
Do not clean them. The single most common way inherited medals lose value.

The one rule

Owning, collecting, buying and selling medals is entirely legitimate and has been for as long as there have been medals. Wearing another person's gallantry awards as though they were yours is the line, and it is a social one rather than a legal one in most cases — which does not make it any less firm.

Court mounting and swing mounting

Two ways to mount a group, and the choice is visible at a glance:

Swing mounting — the medals hang free from the ribbon and move when the wearer does. The traditional arrangement.
Court mounting — each medal is backed and stitched to a stiff board so the group stays flat and silent. Now very common, particularly for anyone who has to wear a group regularly.

Neither is wrong. Court mounting protects the medals from knocking against each other, which matters for a group that gets worn; swing mounting is what an older group is more likely to have originally. For a collector, an original swing mount on an old group is worth preserving rather than "upgrading".

Emblems worn on the ribbon

Besides clasps, small devices are sometimes worn on a ribbon — rosettes, oak leaves and similar — each carrying a specific meaning about how or when an award was made. They are small, easily lost, and easily added.

Two practical consequences. First, an emblem missing from a group you know should have one is worth asking about. Second, and more important, an emblem present on a group can significantly change what the group appears to represent, so on anything valuable it is one of the details worth having verified rather than assumed.

Ribbon: buying, cutting and mounting

Medal ribbon is sold by the length and it is one of the most useful things in this whole area, because it is inexpensive, entirely legitimate to own, and does most of the visual work on a display uniform.

Cut it slightly over-length and fold the ends under rather than cutting to the exact width. Ribbon frays from a cut edge immediately.
Seal the cut edge with a very brief touch of heat on synthetic ribbon, or a tiny amount of clear adhesive on natural fibre.
Match the pattern carefully. Several ribbons are similar and differ only in the width or order of the stripes, and the wrong ribbon on the right medal is a more serious error than no ribbon at all.
Watch for fading. Old ribbon on an original group is part of its history, but a faded modern ribbon next to a fresh one looks simply wrong.