Art Deco Jewellery

Art Deco jewellery is very popular, it is one of those styles that is sought after by collectors and fashionables alike.
Original Art Deco vintage jewellery dates from the 1920s to the 1930s, it is modern, luxurious, exotic and graphic. Short hair of the times needed long earrings to create femininity. Layers of bangles and beads to go with the flapper dresses.
The style became more abstract, angular and linear in shape, created to echo the new machine age of the twenties.
Below is a real Art Deco fish brooch and below that is a vintage style Art Deco brooch circa 1970s..

Not to get confused with other vintage jewellery made in the 1920s and 1930s which have a more rounder and curved style and less angular and machine edged to it. Unfortunately many people are calling this "Art Deco" and they are wrong.

Cameo brooch and perfume container from Avon

Just added a vintage cameo brooch with perfume container by Avon produced in 1970.
The cameo was one of the first vintage brooches produced by Avon in the seventies. Originally Avon began their jewellery range with glace brooches (brooches that had a small container to hold solid perfume) and then moved onto producing normal costume jewellery without perfume containers.

The perfume is unusable today and I wouldn't recommend smelling it! So I usually wash out the perfume as it does smell pretty disgusting. 

Vintage Jewelry by Sarah Coventry Part 13, Spring 1976

This is now part 13 of the Spring brochure 1976 for Sarah Coventry jewelry. Ideal to help name, date and for information on the seventies era vintage jewellery. Some of the pieces are timeless and can be worn with ease today.
Page 40

A = Ember Tear earrings
B = Golden Teardrop Hoop necklace.
C = Ember Tear Choker 16".
Ember tear choker 18" (not shown)

Note the wire choker necklaces were all the rage in the mid seventies, especially the ones with a single initial pendant or large charm.

Page 41
A = Rain Flower earrings (pierced dangle removable)
B = Rain Flower necklace 15 - 16" adjustable.
C = Springtime choker 16 - 18" adjustable.

Note in the seventies short length necklaces of 16" and under were the fashion. However nowdays 16" chains are the average size to pendant and chain necklaces - but they are never referred to as a choker!

 Page 42


Golden Dove pendant 21"
Nite Owl pendant 24"
Madame Butterfly pin (gold tone) Silver tone - not shown.
Fifi pendant 21"

This summer of 2011, owl pendants and other jewellery enjoyed another revival. Still available to buy new. Owl jewellery has always been popular and is worn and collected by people of all ages.

Page 43

The sting pin. (bee)
Slick Chick pin. (bird)
Tiger Fish pendant 24" Fish)
Hercules pendant 24" (dog)
Professor pin (owl)

Just a few related pieces of vintage jewellery from Sarah Coventry. A brilliant bird brooch that is in a silver colour with a twinkling diamante eye. 

This Sarah Coventry booklet has 62 pages, so a few more pages to go!

Monet The Master Jewelers by Alice Vega

A new book is just out on Monet jewellery. Monet The Master Jewelers by Alice Vega was first published a couple of weeks ago and is not one to miss. A large and heavy book filled with the history of Monet or previously Monocraft jewellery. Adverts that date Monet jewellery and plenty of pieces arranged in decades until the eighties.

The company may have started in 1927 as an initials business, producing the monograms that were a popular trend of the 1920s & 1930s for initially cars. The Great Depression, saw them move to handbags as few could afford cars. Expanding their business into jewellery, the company went from Monocraft to Monet in 1937. They produced a YSL line in the 1980s and in the 1990s manufactured the Christian Lacroix line. In 1996 saving the company from bankruptcy, Liz Clairebourne company took over. Still having a name for quality and style Monet continues to expand  today
.

Great book on jewellery, well written and researched and contains page after page of jewellery, definitely one to buy and keep in your reference library.

Here are just a few of the Monet jewellery pieces that are available on Jewels and Finery at the moment.
 

Monet jewellery set of a swirl brooch and matching earrings

We do have many other pieces in stock that we add every week onto the website.

Mirella Brooches

Good morning, I have wrote about jewellery signed Mirella before. W A P Watson the company who produced the Exquisite brand also produced Mirella. Named after an employee, the brand was for fancy goods and mirrors. However I discovered a short time ago that they also produced a few pieces of jewellery under that name - well two brooches it seems!

This was the purple vintage brooch that I brought a while back.

I have seen this brooch not only signed Mirella but also signed Exquisite.

This is the other brooch (below) that I have just brought signed Mirella. It is the only other one that I have seen under the Mirella brand. Both brooches are in my own collection but we source Exquisite and Mirella jewellery that will be added to the page on the above link regularly.

Both pretty floral designs and hand enameled with mock marcasite. Would say they date to the 1960s.
We have added more vintage brooches over the last few weeks in floral designs as well as with many other looks.

BJL Signature on enamel jewellery

BJL signed enamel jewellery was a mystery to many vintage costume jewellery collectors. But at long last the mystery has been solved. BJL stamp refers to The Bohemian Jewellery Ltd company. they produced a huge amount of enamel and marcasite jewellery. Some are stamped and many are not.  

To jog memories here are a few pieces to help things along.

 Signed lily flower brooch and matching clip earrings - also signed. My own collection

BJL made many pretty enamel and marcasite brooches and earrings. Looking at the style and findings of many of their pieces - they made jewellery from the 1920s up to the 1960s at least.  Not only the enamel ones but a range of vintage necklaces, brooches, earrings and bracelets.  Some of the jewellery was signed with block lettering BJL on a square plaque. But there are unsigned ones to look for.

This is an unsigned vintage brooch with a hummingbird. (own collection as wing damaged) A brooch in the same colouring was signed BJL found in America

This little enamelled robin brooch is by BJL but is unsigned.

Both of these brooches are from BJL as size, findings same and they appear to match in style.

Which leads me to the infamous vintage lily brooch in enamel and marcasite. Made in numerous colourways. Is this by BJL? The backs are very similar to the ones that are signed BJL. The lily brooches are in both pot metal with a C shaped fastening. Also they are available with rhodium plated backs and with a safety fastening. SO DO YOU HAVE this brooch with a signature? Please share any information.

 

Pot metal with C shaped fastening - my own collection.

Lily enamel and marcasite brooch - with a safety fastening.

Comments appreciated.

Carnival Glass or Iridescent Glass Jewellery

Little is written about the beautiful blue and black jewellery called Carnival or iridescent beads and glass pieces.

Now I call this type of jewellery - carnival. The name came from my mother and her mother, so this is part of my heritage. It is available in blue and black colours mostly and can be found in both antique and vintage necklaces, earrings, brooches, hat pins and bracelets. Also any other jewellery that used beads and glass. Now days the iridescent look is available on plastic beads.

Vintage carnival necklace 42 cm or 18 inches

Samples of "iridescent" jewellery developed from Roman glass that changed colour over time. It is produced by spraying, adding or fuming (a type of smoking pieces) metallic salts onto coloured glass. It then produces an oil on water effect. The colours and intensity depends on the base glass and amount of salts added. It would have looked enchanting by candle light and is still very pretty when reflected by electric lights today

Treble strand vintage carnival or iridescent necklace

It seems to have first come into fashion at the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Probably as a result of the changes in mourning jewellery, when people still wanted a bit of decorum and to retain the black look, but also were starting to crave a bit of colour.

Fenton in the US in around the 1908 period started to use this technique for making pressed glass bowls and glasses. Its popularity increased from the 1900s up to the 1930s, when the cheaply produced decorative bowls, plates, and glasses were prizes at carnivals fairs. Hence where the name "carnival" derived from. The decorative glass was produced in large quantities and in many different colours. The most popular colours for pressed glass were marigold, amethyst and then the much scarcer blue. The popular blue and black glass jewellery was the colours used most and the many other colours are not represented as much. Common sense tells me that it was more expensive to produce the darker colours that light, but I am not a glass making expert?
Then there was a further revival of carnival glass jewellery in the late 1970s to early 1980s and it is still produced today in lesser quantities.

The clear glass jewellery with the "Northern Lights" effect called aurora borealis (AB) was developed in the mid fifties and gained more popularity over the darker carnival jewellery.
Again common sense tells me that aurora borealis was being developed, when the second world war stopped many new innovations. After the war, the trend was for colour - hence the darker and more somber colours were forfeited for the bright cheerful AB effect.

   

 Aurora borealis clip vintage earrings (Sorry already sold)

The jewellery was produced in Bohemia in the late Victorian era. But it was also produced in the UK, USA, Germany, France and many other countries.

 West Germany vintage carnival glass earrings

The dating to the jewellery is made by reviewing the original findings, but also by the feel of the glass. Early samples are much heavier than later ones. They also have a better quality look to them.

 Vintage blue long necklace with carnival glass beads

See also Ornate clasp vintage necklace in blue carnival beads on our website.