Antique Vintage Jewellery Glossary Part D

Been another busy week. My mother had her birthday this week. We all went for a meal to a place in Worcester.
Then this morning our son gets up and said he was going to the Global gathering Festival. His friend was picking him up in about 15 minutes and could I find him a tent! Now my son is absolutely useless at organizing himself.
So within those minutes he eventually left with a 2 man tent for the 3 of them. Bag packed for a couple of days and a sleeping bag courtesy of mom. The whole family still haven't got over the shock that he passed his driving test last week first time.

Back to the antique jewellery and vintage jewellery glossary part D

Damascene - To in crust metals with other metals. An art first practiced in Damascus. Now many souvenir mock Damascene jewellery comes from Spain.

 Vintage Damascene swallow brooch

Did you know that the swallow was used in the first world war in jewellery, because the swallow always returns home. The jewellery was given to their loved ones going to war

Demi Parure - A small parure or matching jewellery set. A demi - parure may be a brooch and earrings, necklace and earrings, brooch with one or two bracelets, etc

 Vintage demi parure of a necklace and bracelet

Diamante - term used when a stone is used as a diamond substitute made from crystal, glass or acrylic. Usually unfoiled and has a flat back. Can also be used to adore fabric.

Diamond - Originally diamonds were found amongst river and beach gravel.

 Vintage jewellery star leaf brooch

Just one of the lovely vintage brooches added this week. Have a good weekend



   

Just a few more antique and vintage jewellery photographs from our visit to the Jewellery Quarter Museum in Birmingham

Antique pendant and earrings set

Bit blurred but a tortoise shell and pique (gold inlay) cross

Both photographs above are of carved bone

  Coral and pinch beck tiaras

Well worth a visit to the museum. Wish they had the description of the jewellery a bit more in depth and below the actual pieces rather than trying to find them on the wall charts though!

Latest additions to Jewels and Finery

 Vintage jewellery from Exquisite

Contemporary jewellery in the design of an octopus

 Vintage key ring from Avon in the initial A

Yippee heard that all the new checkout for Jewels and Finery Craft is finally through. Now to get that implemented and can start to sell the vintage beads, buttons and craft supplies from there soon.......

Visit to The jewellery Quarter Birmingham Museum

Recently we went to visit the museum at the Jewellery Quarter. Been loads of times to the Quarter but never got round to looking at the museum. Well worth a visit, especially if you are interested in how antique gold jewellery was made.

The museum is in an old terraced house that once was the working premises of the Smith & Pepper company, 75 to 79 Vyse Street, Hockley. The mark on their jewellery is S & P.
Uncle and nephew, Charles Smith and Edward Pepper, rented one house that Charles lived in and the one next door. Turning their home into a factory was not unusual in those times. In the late Victorian period many people in the Jewellery Quarter did this or rented the front room out for industry. Eventually building an extension workshop in the back garden. Edward Pepper's only son died in WW1 and 3 children of Charles took over the family firm. Eric, Tom and Olive, the three never married or had children to continue the family business and so in 1981 when gold was at an all time high they called it a day. Eric was 81, Olive 78 and Tom 74 giving the 11 remaining employees two weeks notice they closed shop. Literally just shut everything down and left. Ten years later Birmingham City Council acquired the premises and found tool covered benches and a gold making factory suspended in time. Many of the items used were used almost a hundred years before. Every time they had attempted to modernize the workers had rebelled preferring old tradition to mechanism that could have made their life a bit easier.

 This is how they made a cup of tea - in the eighties!! 

     

  Polishing benches occupied by women workers - one of the few jobs they were allowed to do!

Dangerous work as the belts rotated on a mechanism and could snap. It was not unknown to hit a woman in the eye and blinding her.

Stamping pit where one worker spent 60 years. As he became older and more fragile, the company tried to help him with a mechanism that took the weight of the pulley ropes. But he did not like it and continued to use his own strength. Pulling the rope activates the stamping machines seen behind the ropes and the weights stamp a sheet of gold.

As said earlier well worth a visit. My only regret is that the historian's of the Jewellery Quarter tend to totally focus on the fine jewellery produced in that area. But many of the factories produced costume jewellery, buttons, souvenir gifts and trinkets. In fact the vintage jewellery of W A P Watson and Miracle all originated in the Jewellery Quarter. Lambourne and Stratton were also located in the Quarter.

Antique Vintage Jewellery Glossary Part A

The past couple of days since my last blog has flown by. Not only getting our other website ready with adding the vintage beads, buttons and other craft material. But the garden has commanded attention. Every thing is growing so quickly at this time of year.

So surrounded by boxes of antique and vintage jewellery, larger boxes of vintage bead and envelopes stuffed full of vintage buttons. (really do need to get some more boxes) I thought just a quick blog today!!

Glossary of antique jewellery and vintage jewellery starting at the A's

AGATE - Quartz with strata of different colours or inclusions which resembles moss or plain coloured. Named for the river Achates

AIGUILLETTE A shoulder knot usually jewelled worn by the Victorians and before on low cut dresses, one on each shoulder matching or just one shoulder similar to a larger brooch

ALBERT A fine gold chain with a bar at one end and a fitting to hold a watch at the other.

ALEXANDRITE A variety of chrysoberyl (gemstone - this name is no longer used as caused confusion, but used extensively in the Victorian period) which is green by natural and red by artificial light. Named after Alexander 11 of Russia because it first came to light on his birthday.

AMAZONITE Opaque green fieldspar (a rock forming important mineral used extensively in industry)

AMETHYST A violet quartz (thought in ancient times to protect its owner from drunkenness)

ANNEALING Softening metal by heating to remove brittleness

ARTIFICIAL QUARTZ Every natural crystal virtually has an artificial counterpart. It can be very difficult to distinguish one from the other. First manufactured in 1845 but until the 1970s was not used extensively in the jewellery industry. Includes Austrian Crystal     

 Miracle are renowned for producing jewellery using artificial quartz or agate stones

But be warned they also use real pieces mostly in their silver jewellery but some is unmarked

Roman shield brooch by Miracle

AVENTURINE QUARTZ Quartz with glittering flakes of mica (a mineral that has the properties that seem to glitter) inside them.

Quartz or semi precious gemstones are used in costume jewellery. It can be very hard to distinguish between glass and mock stones. Jewels and Finery invested in a gem tester to help identify the components in many pieces of antique and vintage jewellery.

Iris or rainbow crystal necklace

This is made from crystal beads as our gem tester shows this to be quartz rather than glass 

   

These beads are often referred to as crystal but many are made from glass

Vintage glass bead necklace

Swarovski crystal is the brand name of cut lead glass. The name crystal derives from the Italian Venetians using the word cristallo to describe rock crystal that the famous Murano glass manufacturers imitated in their glass ware. 

About Cameo Jewellery - Vintage Antique & Cameos of Today

Cameos have been around since ancient times and are still being produced today.
They reflect classical history, artistic imagination, literature and fashion of the day amongst many other subjects .

Pendant ornament with cameo, Italian 1550 - 1600

Reproduced by gracious permission of  her Majesty The Queen
Central cameo 13 century or later? Italian. Enamel decoration, precious stones & semi precious onyx. Surround cameos added in the 16th & 18th century.
Royal Windsor Collection 

City of Birmingham Museum and Art gallery Exhibition of gemstones and jewellery catalogue, 1960.

A cameo does not have to be made from shell or a semi precious materials to be a real cameo. In terms any material that is produced with the raised profile or image that projects above the background of the stone is correct and truthfully can be called a cameo.

 Both vintage cameos. Top vintage shell cameo 1940s Below vintage cameo brooch signed Sphinx

vintage cameo jewellery at www.jewelsandfinery.co.uk

So cameos produced of shell both hand carved and machine carved, semi precious stones like quartz, malachite, onyx, jasper and lapis lazuli to name a few. Opal and moonstone are relatively new semi precious materials used to produce a cameo. Hard stone was first used in production but other natural made materials include jet, coral, ivory, lava and bone were used in abundance. Glass, ceramic and china is still widely used and also many forms of plastics. Bakelite, galalith and celluloid are early forms of plastic and in their day were seen as cheap options; but now their prices are rising and are very collectible. The Queen has a fabulous collection of cameo jewellery many in precious gems such as diamonds.

Cameo Parure of the Empress Josephine. French.

The parure consisted of a crown, a lesser cornal, ear rings, bracelet, slide and comb. All set with cameos in gold, decorated with blue enamel. Crown, comb and clasp are set with carnelians, the rest with onyx and shell. BC Museum and Art Gallery, Exhibition of gemstones and jewellery catalogue, 1960.      

Cameo were produced firstly by hand carving but when machines became a way to increase production they are were molded, cast, stamped or carved. However hand carved cameo production still continues today. Always view a shell cameo with a lens or magnifier. Hand carved cameos do not have the minute "snow effect" around the edge of the profile where it joins the background, which machine or ultrasonically produced "carved" cameos have. Today fashion cameos used in jewellery, tend to be the one recognizable profile which I have christened  "The Popular Goddess" mass produced in many different forms of fashion or costume jewellery or used as embellishment on shoes, clothes and furnishing.

     

The Popular Goddess cameo bracelet - pre owned jewellery on Jewels and Finery SOLD

Fashion has seen cameo jewellery raise in popularity in the Victorian era until the fifties and sixties. It waned in fashion in the seventies but has never gone away - as there has always been a minority that love and wear cameos. Which has meant that cameos have continued in production to today.   

Cameo collecting is very much personnel taste, many collect just shell cameo and others jet and lava. But there is a growing number who collect plastic and glass cameos. It does not have to be a collection that has large monetary or investment value of today. Fashion will influence the value of antiques (items over 100 years old) and vintage (any item about 25 years old to a hundred) So what is bought at a high price today may depreciate in value in a few years. And of course the reverse happens - items that are of low value in their times, lava and early plastics for example have in relatively few years command a high value now.

D & E vintage cameo jewellery taken from Juliana Jewelry Reference DeLizza & Elster, identification and value guide by Ann Pitman (previously reviewed on this blog)

Vintage cameo jewellery that is of glass and plastic produced by designer and manufacturers: for example D & E and Sphinx, are commanding quite high prices in today's market. But it could easily be Exquisite, Hollywood or the mass produced cameo The Popular Goddess" in the future Who can predict?

Collecting is up to the individual and should be fun and affordable to each individuals taste.

The Reicharts cameo factory manufacturing a broad range of colours in ultrasonically created cameos.

Cameos Old and New 4th Edition by Anna M Miller (Previously reviewed on this blog) 

Antique Vintage or Second Hand Jewellery?

The terms antique and vintage are used liberally on many websites and on auction houses, but what actually does this mean?

Antique jewellery is essentially jewellery that is at least a hundred years old or older. So Victorian jewellery and jewellery that was produced at the turn of the twentieth century or early Edwardian; can officially be called antique.

This cameo brooch is antique. Victorian or earlier - the pin is longer than todays pins. Cameos profiles can be a clue. Her nose is long which dates the cameo as older, where as a turned up nose became popular mid twentieth century onwards.

Vintage jewellery is the term that is most often miss used. Jewellery becomes vintage when it is over twenty years old. So jewellery produced in 1989 and before then - up until it becomes an antique should be classed as vintage.

This art deco brooch is classed as vintage jewellery.

Jewellery produced since 1989 up to yesterday is second hand or used. However because very few people search for second hand jewellery on the internet - we prefer to call this jewellery vintage modern. We hope this term will catch on and become more widely used.

What do you think?An antique gold coloured moth brooch is classed as vintage modern.

The plastic necklace below - would you say it was vintage or second hand?


Answer - Vintage

The necklace is an original pop it bead necklace. The plastic beads have plugs that can be pulled out and the necklace can be made into a choker or into two bracelets. Made in the 1950s, pop it jewellery was originally made for the adult market. This necklace is faceted. However children loved this type of jewellery and in the sixties the beads became more colourful and most were sold for childrens use. Wonderful to collect as they are now classed as Art plastic

Jewels and Finery