“Vintage” is used for the things that have stood the test of time. The word is combined with the jewelry to refer to the designs that have survived all the changes throughout history. Like a fine oak tree, the vintage jewelry ages beautifully and with grace.
The eloquent pieces that have gone through the generations in the families. They have now made their way through the market and become the new way to define the fashion in jewelry. Due to this collaboration of modernization with the old vintage jewelry, which piece of jewelry falls in the vintage category becomes difficult to find.
So it can become a bit challenging for beginners. So, here we are, delivering you with a comprehensive guide that will break down the complexities. It will help you identify the vintage jewelry in thousands of jewelry pieces. Let’s get you started with the best tips to find some jewelry pieces for you.
Identifying The Vintage Jewelry-
When someone decides to go and fetch some vintage ornaments, they first need to understand the prospect of price. Authentic vintage jewelry is worth the price you pay. It values every single penny of yours; however, as we know, millions of pieces have been labeled as vintage when they aren’t. So, what are you running to do about it?
You want to look at these four characteristics while shopping for vintage jewelry: The design, techniques, material, and stamps. However, every one of these characteristics varies according to the era they were produced in. So, you will explore each of them, one by one, based on the ears. Here is how you can do it.
1830-1900: The Victorian Era-
The experts divide the Victorian era into three different times or say “periods.”
- The romantic
- Grand
- Aesthetic Period
Each period has something special, like the romantic period symbolizes romance and love. Thus the symbol of love, eternal, and wisdom was popular with the era. And the colorful gems like amethyst, topaz, garnets, and turquoise were widespread and abundant.
While the grad era made popular garnished jewelry like vulcanite, onyx, and jet, the aesthetic period began with more cheerful designs that consisted of animal head designs, knots, and bows. There were various designs in the aesthetic periods, but a pretty popular one was the solitaire style featuring a diamond embedded in a band sign with tiny claws.
Throughout the Victorian era, some common materials, like gold, colorless stones, silver, jet, ivory, opals, pearls, and emeralds. And the other thing that described the notice was techniques like hand-carved conch shell cameos.
So, when you look for vintage jewelry from the Victorian era, look for vintage gold jewelry like keepsake lockets, heart and flower motifs, snakes, and jet black brochures.
1901-1910: The Edwardian Era-
The Edwardian Era, also known as the King Edward era, is another popular time where jewelry designs thrived. The designs were most suitable for the standard women’s fashion, unlike in the Victorian era.
Edward Era jewelry has unique features. They have intricate filigree and milgrain work to enclose the beauty of the ornaments. The filigree designs include the more lacy designs, while the milgrain differed by including beads on the border. All the jewelry pieces were quite representative of the finality.
The articles are mainly embedded with diamonds, pearls, white metals, and other materials like platinum and gold. So, when you have to shop for vintage jewelry, you can long for the diamonds and pearl tigers, long pearl rope necklaces, glittering earrings, and gold knot things. Most of the jewels used in the Edward era were platinum, diamonds, pearls, gold, sapphires, and emeralds.
1890-1915: The Art Nouveau Era-
Historians believe the Nouveau era overlaps with the Edwardian era. However, the one thing that is certain here is that both periods have different jewelry styles.
The Nouveau Era has embraced a free form of organic designs and distinct sweeping curves, enameling, and whimsical elements. Most of the jewelry pieces from this era have soft and glowing effects.
The commonly used stones in this era were citrine, amber, moonstone, peridot, freshwater pearls, and peridot opal. However, you can find other designs also, as artists have experimented with more unconventional materials such as glass, ivory, and horn.
The jewelry pieces can include insects, plants, women, flowers, and mythical creatures.
So, what you can commonly find in the Nouveau era jewelry is silver, low-grade gold, steel, garnet, citrine, pearls, opal, and moonstone in pearls. At the same time, the designs you can look at include truculent enamels, fairies, butterflies, dragonflies, and flowers, along with sweeping curves.
1915-1935: The Art Deco Era-
The Art Deco era belongs to the pieces that were bold, bright, modern, and bright and to the stones like sapphires, emeralds along with rubies.
For this particular area, the yellow gold remained out of style. Instead, white gold has taken over the inspiration of the artists. Most of the artists used gold or platinum to craft the ornaments. The technique used to create these diamonds was the old European cut.
The use of filigree remained constant between the Art Deco and Edwardian style pieces. So, you can look for more geometric shapes, bright designs, and opaque stones in this era. And most of the material that one can look for is platinum, chrome, sapphire, rubies, gold, and pearls.
1930-1940: The Retro Era-
This was the war era, and war-affected everything, including the supplies of metals. And the less supply of the other metals brought back the yellow gold and sterling silver.
The war also resulted in a lack of gemstones, causing jewelers to use more synthetic gemstones and semi-precious stones like peridot, citrine, aquamarine, and tourmaline. And all the jewelers designed the majority of the jewelry with one or two large, bulky stones. To utilize the gold available, the jewelers started to create new designs like “snake chains.”
Most of the material that was available was synthetic gemstones, silver, and yellow gold. The techniques the jeweler used the most were women, gold, and braiding.
The most that you can expect out of this era was light blue sapphire, bow, or flower brooches, patriotic themes, and convertible jewelry.
We have discussed all the era and the material that was more in use according to the era, and the designs to help you out identify the vintage jewelry ornaments. And, after knowing everything, if you want to buy vintage earrings for sale, you can visit the store of CertifidFineJewlry.
