Made in Japan

Did you see the movie Hairspray? Do you remember the jewelry that was worn by Michelle Pfeiffer as Velma Von Tussle? She wore these wonderful strands of beads and matching clip earrings with her dresses. Of course, that movie was set in the mid to late 1950's.

Many beautiful beads came from Japan after the war years. Necklaces were made of two, three, four or five strands. They were mostly chokers so that they would show below the open V collars that were fashionable then. The beads themselves were all different sizes and shapes and could be made of glass, plastic or crystal. They pretty much all had hook style closures.

The beads themselves were in a rainbow of colors. Some sets were a single color, like the white and peach color beads here. Or they could be monochromatic colors, like the browns shown here. Contrasting colors, such as black and white, often mixed with crystals were also popular. There was no end to the many beautiful combinations that were available.

A lot of these sets can be found today and many of them are just as incredible as they were then. These beads can still be worn today even though they are more than 50's years old. Of course, a lot of modern crafters have discovered all this wonderful beads and many modern pieces have also be made by recycling these old beads. Either way, they always make interesting pieces of jewelry to wear.






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Why Buy Screw Back Earrings

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I was sad because someone was making a pair of cuff links from a pair of vintage screw back earrings I had sold them. But there's another way to look at it.

Many of the screw back earrings I sell on eBay are are 50 to 80 years old. They were designed by excellent designers and the
materials used were of a much higher quality. That's why they are still around today.


Rhinestones in particular were often better made back then. Often the stones were made of glass rather than plastic. Today's rhinestones seem to darken quickly and the finish tarnish.

That's why many crafters take old screw back earrings and turn them into pierced earrings. They are very easy to convert. Just snip off the screw portion and add a pierced back. The result is often a beautiful and unique earrings. And a small piece of history is given a new life.

Do You Remember Screw Back Earrings?

I sell a lot of earrings on eBay. Most of the earrings have either screw backs or clip backs since I sell vintage jewelry.

Screw back earrings were popular from the 1930's to the 1950's. Clip earrings were popular from the 1950's into the 1980's and remain popular today.

Imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from a customer who was unfamiliar with screw back earrings. She asked me how you were supposed to wear them. She had a hazy idea that maybe you screwed them through your ears. Ouch!

1940's Jewelry and Retro Modern Style

During the 1940's, many materials previously used in jewelry design were required for the war effort. Pot metal, silver and platinum became not just scarce, but in some instances illegal for use for commercial purposes. So designers turned to other materials and developed new designs as the war effort continued.

Yellow gold and rose gold, set with just a few clear and colored rhinestones, which had become scarce, replaced earlier materials. Art Deco, with it's geometric designs, was replaced by the more curvilinear Retro Modern style. Large cocktail rings, oversize bracelets, snake chains and bright, bold brooches with a single massively cut rhinestone became fashionable. The bracelet above is a perfect example of retro modern style from the late 40's.

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?