I assume that if you’re into buying vintage jewellery, you probably are at least a bit interested in knowing when it was made. When you’re wearing vintage earrings and someone compliments them, which reply is cooler: “Thanks, they’re vintage”, or “Thanks, they were made in the 1940s in Czechoslovakia”? 💅
For me, in particular, this is quite an important topic because the majority of the beads I use for my own jewellery designs come from vintage necklaces I take apart. I source these vintage necklaces online, at thrift shops, antique fairs, etc, and being able to tell when a necklace was made helps me gauge how rare it is and how much I should pay for it. Most vintage sellers will try their best to say when things are from, but not everyone does their homework. It’s just due dilligence to double check if someone says a necklace is art deco if it really is from the 1920s/1930s, and not a modern reproduction in art deco style!
Also, when I create the product listings for my own designs, I try to pinpoint the decade each bead is from so the buyer can share in the excitement of owning a truly unique upycled piece of jewellery! (And so when someone compliments it, you can say “Thanks, this is an upcycled piece made with beads from the 1930s and 1960s made in Japan”, etc 😊).
I hope this guide will help other vintage collectors (and sellers) who are interested in knowing when their beaded necklaces were made! This is definitely the guide I wish I had when I started Luneta :)
The above being said, if you have nothing to go from, it can be quite hard to pinpoint the decade a necklace was made. It’s not like when New Years eve of 1930 hit, everyone just collectively decided they’d no longer wear long pearl necklaces, so it’s not like we can safely say “this long pearl necklace was made in the 1920s for certain”. Also, someone could re-thread an older necklace with more modern findings… I’m pretty sure my jewellery will boggle people down the line as I mix a bunch of vintage beads from different decades in the same piece!
So, yeah, dating vintage jewellery is more of an art than a science 🤣
Make sure to read my other blog post, “Vintage, retro, antique or second-hand?”, to learn what makes something vintage. In short, for anything to be considered vintage, it needs to be at least 20 years old - to be an antique, at least 100. After so many years of use, one can only expect a necklace to acquire a little grime and dirt (gross, I know - read my post on how I clean vintage jewellery), sometimes there are beads missing or chipped, tarnishing to the metal parts, or it lost its clasp at some point… Even with deadstock beads/jewellery (items that have never been used), we can expect tarnishing or at least a little dust, and also they should come in vintage packaging. For more tips, read on!
Just to be clear, my knowledge and focus are mostly regarding beaded vintage necklaces, as that’s what I buy to take apart for beads. If you’re interested in dating other kinds of vintage jewellery (like non-beaded necklaces, earrings, brooches, etc), I listed a few of my favourite resources in the “Content Sources and Interesting Reads” section further down.
For dating beaded necklaces, there’s pretty much two factors you should analyse: 1) Does the style of the piece match vintage fashion of a certain decade? and 2) What materials were used?.
Let’s deep dive into each of these!
We’ll start this style guide analysing fashion jewellery styles from the 1920s on because that’s when costume jewellery really took off, thanks to some advances in technology, the help of advocates like Coco Chanel and the rise of silent cinema/Hollywood. Costume jewellery is a piece of jewellery made with materials that don’t have intrinsic value to them, i.e. they are not made of solid gold, diamonds, real gemstones, etc. The bulk of my knowledge goes up to the 1960s, as from the 70s on beaded styles weren’t that in anymore.
Before the 1920s, jewellery was mostly used as a status symbol (a 3D bank statement, if you like), and people would be embarassed to be wearing something like costume jewellery because it just wasn’t fashionable. Let’s see what changed from the 1920s on :)
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