Plastics and Lisner Jewelry

I can't talk about the use of plastics in jewelry without adding a little about one of my favorite jewelry companies, Lisner.  In my opinion, Lisner made the best use of molded plastics of any jewelery company in the 1950's.  Almost any serious jewelry collector would agree that a set of Lisner's molded maple leaf jewelry is a must if you want to consider your collection complete.

I'm still working towards that elusive goal, but here are just a few examples from my personal collection.  I'm always hoping to add similar pieces!

 

 

Life is What Happens...

Well, since my last post month's ago, life happened. It's funny how just a few little words can have deep and lasting changes. In my case, the words were "they sold the golf course."

Now let me explain. We lived in a lovely condo complex with woods on one side and a golf course on the other. The traffic on the corner was moderately busy during the day, especially when school opened or let out. But the second we heard those words, and discovered they were going to put up moderately priced units where the golf course was, we knew what was coming. And so, we started a house hunt.

We quickly found our dream house and were successful in purchasing it. But in our innocence, we didn't realize how much work and time that would entail. Additionally, we were anxious to put our condo on the market and get the best price possible. In order to do that, we had to store 75% of our belongings to do some renovations and stage the house for sale. It took over two months, and during that period anything we wanted was always in storage. This included a good portion of my business.

As soon as all the work was finished, we put the condo on the market. A week later our new house closed. Of course, we wanted to make all the changes possible in the new place before we actually moved, such as painting, etc. In the meantime, the condo was professionally staged, so we couldn't actually live in it for fear we would mess it up. For close to a month, we lived in the basement of the new house during the day, and slept in the condo at night.

But in the end, it all paid off. The condo sold in two and a half weeks. There were multiple bids, and we were able to get our full asking price. At last we were able to move our furniture - and beds! - into the new house and retrieve our items from storage. We're finally unpacked, organized and living in just one place.

Going forward I plan to post to this blog on Tuesdays and Fridays. On Friday on next week, I'll share some interesting facts on the development of plastics in costume jewelry. Hope you'll stop by!

You Don't Need to Follow the Crowd

If you don't want to look like everyone else, consider wearing vintage costume jewelry. A pretty rhinestone bracelet, and unusual pendant or even an old-fashioned cameo can set you apart. Here's a few pieces that will set you apart from the crowd.

Crafters Versus History

Recently, some one purchased a beautiful pair of reverse carved lucite earrings from me with lovely red roses inside. The buyer wrote me a nice note expressing how happy she was with the earrings. And then she let me know that she planned to take the earrings apart and turn them into cuff links.

Of course, the buyer can do anything she wants with her purchase. But I couldn't help but be suffer a small pang because a another piece of vintage jewelry was once again being lost to an eager crafter.

Of course remaking and modernizing the old to make something new has always been done. I bet if one were to look carefully at the cave paintings as Lascaux, there would be traces of someone who made changes too!

My Favorite Jewelry Reference Book

No, it doesn't have a lot of pretty pictures. It has just enough. It's not big and heavy and it doesn't make me look like an intellectual. It just clearly and simply pictures and defines all those little parts and pieces (or findings and settings, for the purists) of jewelry. And it's small enough to fit in my purse.

This book is one that I normally wouldn't have purchased because I already have a large library of jewelry reference books. I've taken classes at NYU on costume jewelry, appraising jewelry and the identification and history of jewelry. But you know what? After all that I still find myself running back to my book for the correct term or the correct spelling. Why?

Well, there's a very simple reason why Leigh Leshner's Secrets to Collecting Costume Jewelry has become the most useful book in my library. It's simply the fact that the book so well laid out and so easy to use that it's always the first thing I reach for.

Leshner begins with a general discussion of collecting costume jewelry, including where to buy, tools, and some helpful hints and secrets. She manages to wrap up her expertise of years of collecting in less than 40 well written and easily read pages. If you know absolutely nothing about collecting costume jewelry you can't go wrong with her advice.

She spends the next portion of the book delineating the era's of costume jewelry beginning with Victorian times. Although she only illustrates these era's with one or two pieces of jewelry, she has somehow managed to select the most perfect and typical example of each.

From the discussion of eras she moves on to the discussion of manufacturing and techniques used to create different types of jewelry. She gives excellent examples of enameling techniques, shapes of rhinestones and types of findings that our commonly (and uncommonly!) used in costume jewelry. Each has item has one of two small pictures that make identification easy.

The final portion of the book include definitions "Specific types of Jewelry, Materials and Styles". There she defines and gives examples of such items as duettes, sautoirs and prison rings. It's most useful when you come across that oddball piece and you'd love to know what it is.

There's lots more in the book to enjoy, but as a basic reference book it can't be beat!

Gather Ye Rosebuds...

I was going through some of my collection and I was struck by the fact that some motifs in jewelry that have been around forever. Flowers, for example have been used for beautification ever since the first cave woman stuck a flower in her hair for cave men to admire and other cave women to envy.

Of course there are a lot of different species of flowers and jewelry reflects nature's diversity. For example, you will find daisies, black-eyed susans, chrysanthemums, dahlias in both fine and costume jewelry. However, one of the most enduring and favorite flowers used by jewelry designers are the rose and rosebud.



Here's a perfect example of a great use of material by a designer to depict a very realistic rosebud. The designer has used both gold and silver tone metals to bring out the details. Through the intelligent use of materials, this piece conveys a very natural feeling. Alas, this piece is unsigned, so we will never know who made such a wonderful creation.


A completely different approach was used on the little carved white brooch below. The rose is much more stylized because of the nature of the material used for the rose. The leaves are much more realistic. Both the rose and petals are contained in a twisted circle of gold. This is a classic piece of costume jewelry from the 1950's - 1960's that would look just as good on today's fashions as it did then.


Of course, rosebuds weren't just used for brooches. Roses for the ear proliferate just as much as roses for the bosom. There are many examples of roses and rosebuds for the ears. Small rose earrings were particularly popular in the 1950's and remain popular today. I'll leave you with this interesting pair of Coro earrings that are embellished with rhinestones. These particular earrings are a bit unusual because the earrings have a full stem and two large leaves. It's much more common to see just a single rose with perhaps one or two tiny leaves peeking through from the back.

Perhaps there is a matching brooch out there somewhere for these earrings?