Jewellery Classics over the Years - Vintage Costume Jewellery

Jewellery has been the uniform symbol of success and wealth over the Centuries. It was often said that you could detect a person’s wealth by the very adornments worn about their person. Jewellery has had a timeless appeal to it and now fine examples of vintage jewellery are much prized possessions.

But for many of us, the money required to buy antique jewellery is out of our league, let alone the insurance costs and fear of theft. So why not do what many have done before - buy costume jewellery instead. But not just any costume jewellery - vintage costume jewellery. That's right; you can still buy yourself a piece of history, with a greatly reduced price tag.

During the industrial era, the range of ideas and inventions was truly mind boggling. So many things that had previously been only accessible to rich people were successfully imitated and duplicated for the masses. And jewellery was no exception. Previously, jewellery was made from real jewels such as diamonds, rubies and emeralds, set in gold.

There were cheaper options available, such as wooden beads and cheaper metals, but still there was a great demand for cheap gemstone jewellery. But imitating the brilliance and lustre of real gems was a challenge. Finally, it was discovered that by grinding glass into a powder, colouring it and then placing it into a mould, it was possible to kiln fire it and end up with something that looked remarkably like the real thing. Once the paste version had hardened, it could be cut, shaped and polished.

This discovery founded a whole new cottage industry, with countless hours spent producing these fake, or paste gems. George Strass, in the 1700s, realized that adding glitter to the paste in the form of ground lead glass and other additives meant that the resulting paste gem had a better ability to refract light. This meant it could glitter almost as well as a real gem. By experimenting with various additives, colors could be added and so replicate rubies and other colored gemstones.

Another huge leap was made with the experimentation with lead crystal, conducted by Daniel Swarovski. He founds ways to produce better crystal and produce it faster, so that crystals for jewelry become quicker and cheaper to produce. It wasn't long before crystals become extremely popular in costume jewelry.

Now that they had access to beautiful imitation stones, jewelers began to produce costume jewelry using similar designs and techniques to those used on real jewelry. This means that there is now a huge range of vintage costume jewelry available on the market today.

Of course, even vintage costume jewelry can be expensive, if it's very old and beautiful. So for most of us, the vintage costume jewelry we buy is more likely to be a modern replica. Still, unless you spend a lot of time with jewelry experts, does that really matter? As long as my jewelry is stunning and beautiful, I don't really care how old it is.

So check out some vintage costume jewelry now, either online or at your local mall. You might be surprised just how many beautiful pieces are now available, mimicking the most popular designs of centuries gone by - and with an affordable price tag.

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