An Exquisite Meenakari Necklace

A dear friend here on the blog has today lent us her stunning Meenakari necklace to learn from, and the more I read about the process of making these pieces, the more fascinating it gets!  Let’s have a closer look:

An Indian Meenakari necklace

Meenakari is a craft that involves decorating metal with enamel.  Today some of the most sought-after Meenakari pieces are produced in Jaipur, and come in the form of jewellery, housewares, sculptures and architecture (1).  The craft was invented by the Iranian craftsmen of the Sasanied era and introduced to India by the legendary Mughals, whose empire stretched from 1526 until 1857.  I actually became completely engulfed in the history of the Mughals while writing this post, as it involves all kinds of fascinating components; from descendants of the infamous Genghis Khan, to times of great religious tolerance and respect for human rights – on to the building of magnificent monuments like the Taj Mahal (2).  But now we must go back to our Meenakari designs:

A close up of the impressive craftsmanship that has gone into making this necklace

There are several steps to Meenakari and the art requires the involvement of a number of craftsmen: a designer draws up the jewellery, traditionally drawing inspiration from nature in the shape of flowers, peacocks, parrots and elephants.  A metalsmith then creates the metal base: gold for the more high-end pieces, and silver for the more affordable ones.  Another artisan then engraves the metal with the intricate designs, and the enameler – also known as the Meenakar – applies the powdered colour to the piece.  It is then fired at a high temperature, which melts the powder and spreads the colour evenly into the piece.  The colours are applied in the order of heat resistance – usually with white applied first and red added on last.  Finally another specialised craftsman adds on the gemstones.

I would say that the most notable thing with Meenakari is that the design is done on the reverse side of the piece.  This means that it is not visible to the rest of the world, but meant to be there merely for the enjoyment of the wearer.

An Indian Meenakari necklace

The craft is passed on from generation to generation, and outsiders never fully know the secrets of the art.  Meenakari is a long and laborious craft form and completing one piece of jewellery can take up to several months.

The reverse side of the piece, with the exquisite Meenakari design

 

Sources:

(1) Isharya Blog

(2) Wikipedia – The Mughal Empire

This past week at Richard Ogden

Hello sweetheart!  So I love looking through the photos on my phone and seeing what lovely jewellery has crossed my path in the past week, and today is no exception!  We will start with this beautiful turquoise, pearl and gold necklace from the 1880/90s that one of our dealers showed me the other day:

Stunning necklace ca 1880/1890s

 

Gold, pearl and turquoise necklace ca 1880/1890s – sorry about the shaky picture, I must have been so overwhelmed by the beautiful design that I just couldn’t keep my hand steady! 

It is a typical English design with a nature motif, which was so very popular toward to the turn of the last century, which is when this necklace is from.  I had a chat to one of the dealers about whether it was an Art Nouveau piece or not, and he didn’t think so as it doesn’t quite carry the specific design of Art Nouveau, but he did say that there are some very pretty scroll work in the piece.

I obviously adore it especially because my grandmother loves the combination of gold and turquoise – and with the pearls it just becomes so delicate and romantic.  I would love to wear it with a nice and light summer dress, oh and speaking of which: I can’t WAIT for summer to come around, I am sure you feel the same way!!!

Gold bracelets from Richard Ogden, BADA Antiques & Fine Art Fair

And I spent this morning looking through our stock from the BADA fair and got stuck dreaming away on these chunky gold bracelets from Harvey & Gore.  They have some pretty exquisite jewellery, so if you are ever walking down the Burlington Arcade, do take a look in our windows, and you will see the Harvey & Gore collection in our last window down towards Piccadilly.  Everything is obviously beautiful, but these guys have some exquisite period pieces that are so much fun to look at!

So there we are dearest, I should be back again on Tuesday next week, as I am bit tied up on Monday.  I hope that you have a wonderful weekend and I can’t wait to bring you some more beautiful pieces next week!

Jewellery Collection Essentials

Hello dear!  So I have come across quite a few blog posts on the topic Your Wardrobe Essentials – you know the usual drill of  ‘a crisp white shirt, a black pencil skirt, a pair of skinny jeans, a pair of black trousers, the perfect white t-shirt, a black cardigan, a trench coat’ etc.  How very not exciting I say – and would like to introduce to you my take on ‘Your Jewellery Collection Essentials‘!

A pair of my jewellery wardrobe staples – a pair of blue topaz beauties, vintage style from South Africa

These are all pieces that I have found myself using on a regular basis, and of course, if you decide to invest in any of these items I would encourage you to go for vintage or antique.  When you look through your jewellery collection to see what pieces you already have, remember to include jewellery that you have inherited from your grandmother(s).  These often become the most treasured ones, and even though you might want to keep them safe and locked away, keep in mind that they were made to be worn, loved and admired!

Make a list in your head of the pieces of jewellery that you know that you will be using on a regular basis, and when you get to your next vintage jewellery fair or shop you will know what you should look for!  The above photo is from the Frock Me! Vintage Fashion Fair

1. Pearl Earrings 

By adding a pair of (in my case preferably white) pearl earrings to your outfit, you can transform a whole look!  A plain office outfit becomes all that more sophisticated; a little black dress gets an air of Audrey Hepburn elegance; and a cocktail dress becomes oh so glamorous!  It is my firm opinion that pearl earrings are a must in every girl’s jewellery wardrobe.  You can vary the sizes so that you have a pair of smaller pearls as well as the larger ones, as different sized pearls bring different looks to yours outfits.

2. Pearl Necklace

This one goes hand-in-hand with the pearl earrings and I just love wearing pearl earrings and a pearl necklace together.  Try to match the sizes of the pearls in the earrings and necklaces for good balance – but have fun while playing around with them!  I just love the Sex and the City movie scene where Carries tries on the Lanvin wedding dress (Google search for it here) and that big, chunky pearl necklace!  Not to mention when she is draped in pearls with the Christian Lacroix dress! (Google results here)  

3. Gold Earrings 

For an outfit in warm colours, gold jewellery is just such a wonderful choice.  Either go for small golden earrings or a pair of golden earrings with a small stone, for example a turquoise, diamond or even a pearl.  I tend to keep my everyday earrings quite small so that they match a simple and elegant necklace – without stealing the show!

4. Gold Necklace 

Something elegant and understated that goes with your golden earrings.  The beauty here is that you have a sea of different styles to choose from: will you choose a gold pendant or a small sparkling stone that complements the gold?  Or a necklace where the chain is the main detail?  I have always known that gold chain necklaces don’t suit me, so judge by my dread when I was asked to try one on in the shop the other day to show a client!  I was then so surprised to see that it actually suited me, and that I liked the look!  So again, have a play around with the different styles as you might get surprised as to what suits you best!

Vintage gold locket with initials

3. Silver Coloured Earrings

Silver, white gold and platinum are especially perfect when you wear an outfit featuring cold colours (blues, greens etc) but they do of course go very well with everything.  Silver coloured earrings that come with a bit of sparkle, such as diamonds or Swarovski crystals, are always a lovely choice.  I tend to go for the smaller ones as I love the subtle glitter, and they are perfect for matching up with a pretty silver necklace.

Vintage sparkling silver stud earrings

4. Silver Necklace

You can either go for a classic silver chain necklace, one with a silver details or something with a small sparkling stone.  I have found that I don’t wear sets very often – pre-matched jewellery – but I tend to mix and match my pieces so that my earrings for example carry a bit of sparkle, while the necklace is then just plain silver, like my Tiffany bow below:

Tiffany & Co silver bow necklace

5. Bracelet

When it comes to bracelets the choice is a bit wider: you don’t wear the bracelet right next to the rest of the jewellery so do play around a bit more with colours, metals and stones.  For example, if I am wearing gold jewellery I often wear my great aunt’s Kalevala bracelet – an old Finnish design in brass, in the far right photo below.  Kalevala is a fascinating brand so we will come back to that in a later post!

6. Rings

Rings are such fun and there are so many different styles to mention:

• Cocktail Rings, my favourite rings that keep coming back here on the blog as they are sooo gorgeous and fun to play around with:

• For those of you who are married or engaged I am sure that your Engagement Ring and Wedding Ring are the biggest parts of your jewellery-outfit.  And yes, I am still planning to write a guide to buying a vintage engagement ring one day, so watch this space!

• A friend of mine brought to my attention to the beauty of wearing lots of elegant silver rings, and you might remember that I recreated the look in an older posts: Knitted Gloves and Silver Rings.

Have a play around with you rings and pair them up with something unexpected, like a pair of old cut-off knitted gloves

6.  Statement Necklace

It is always a good idea to invest in a statement necklace that goes with many different outfits – which is not very hard as this piece is meant to stand out!  It means that you can be bold with colours and don’t hold back on the sparkle!

I hope you enjoyed this alternative version of wardrobe essentials and I would love to hear what your jewellery essentials are?  Do you have a special piece of jewellery that you wear every day?

Happy Halloween!

Brompton Cemetery

Wishing all of you little pumpkins a fabulous Halloween!  Make sure that you have stacked up on sweets – or homemade, natural sugar-only treats 😉 – for those teeny tiny Harry Potters, Grumpy Cats and ghosts that are bound to come knocking on your door.  And remember to incorporate some antique or vintage jewellery into your costumes – those witches didn’t wake up looking that fabulous, if you know that I am saying!?!!

If you just want to give Halloween a little nudge, to show that you haven’t forgotten about it, you can always just a wear a piece of scary jewellery – like a snake necklace!

Happy Halloween!!!

Andrew Prince Jewellery

Oh it was such a fun day in the shop yesterday, as Andrew Prince popped by (you might remember him from the earlier blog post Andrew Prince – Downton Abbey).

I was sitting at my desk in the shop when Andrew suddenly said: “Don’t move, I am just putting a little something on you”.  Now, one of my absolute favourite things in this line of work is of course trying on all the beautiful pieces, so I just sat there quietly until he had finished fiddling around with the necklace – and then I looked in the mirror, expecting a little something dainty:

Andrew Prince Jewellery

Yes, I should know by know that Andrew doesn’t do little or dainty – he does fabulous, glorious and exquisite, and all of his pieces makes you feel like you are the Queen of the World.  There is a thought behind the placement of each and every one of the pearls, red stones and the glorious sparkle, and I love how it all comes together in this necklace to create such an impact piece!  Oh well, just another day in paradise!

I hope that you are having a lovely day in the sunshine my dear – and don’t forget to put on your favourite pieces of jewellery!

South African handmade vintage necklaces – chapter III

Oh I couldn’t help but create another colour boost-post after this glorious summer!  We are back in Cape Town where we made the acquaintance of Jeanette, the necklace designer from last year’s two posts: South African handmade vintage necklaces – chapter I and South African handmade vintage necklaces – chapter II.

Rose quartz gives this necklace such a soft, romantic look

A closer view of Jeanette’s design

I have two more necklaces from her collection to show you today – a pink and a purple one and they are both just radiating colour and joy!  This first one contains the lovely gemstone rose quartz.  Rose quartz is a very special crystal when used in healing because of its powers to attract and keep love.  In feng shui it is used as a love cure.  It is believed to help healing the heart from pain and disappointment, and dissolve painful memories in one’s love-life.  It is a happy and loving stone and it embraces all kinds of love: family, friends, love for yourself and romantic love.  It also brings peace to us by relieving stress, bringing forgiveness, easing feelings of guilt and bringing families together.  What a precious little stone it is indeed!

Handmade necklace, Cape Town

And then there is this purple necklace in which Jeanette has used beads in various shades that complement each other and tousled around to create an illusion of movement.  She also incorporates parts from vintage pieces of jewellery to give the necklaces another dimension of charm and uniqueness, which we just love.  So thank you dear Jeanette for letting us look closer at your beautiful pieces.

A very happy Friday to you as well my dear!

Antique Pearl Necklace Clasps vs Centre Motifs

 

Rows of antique pearl necklaces at Richard Ogden, in the Burlington Arcade

So I was working in the antique shop the other day – namely counting diamonds on a brooch – and having lost count a million or so times, I decided to take a little break and started aimlessly wandering around the shop instead.  I ended up – like so many times – by the pearl necklaces…  ahh sigh of happiness, they are just so beautiful!  The middle one in the photo above we have already familiarised ourselves with in the previous post Victorian Pearl Necklace with a Diamond Clasp, but I loved them all and started looking closer at them:

Pearl necklace with a diamond brooch clasp

This little beauty above is another example of a pearl necklace with a diamond brooch as the clasp; in other words it also has a very clever mechanism at the back which turns it into a brooch that you can wear separately.

The centre motif features a beautiful sapphire surrounded by eight diamonds

… and then there was this necklace with two rows of pearls and a centre motif featuring a sapphire.

This necklace is from around the 1920’s and I am obviously learning all these ways of determining the age of the pieces, and something that is very helpful is determining what metal has been used in the design – this one is set in platinum.  Platinum gained popularity in jewellery making in the beginning of the 20th century as it was such a beautiful and strong metal.  The use of platinum in anything other than military applications was however prohibited during the second World War, as it was declared a strategic material.  After the war it gained popularity again because of its properties: its strength allowed jewellery makers to create very fine yet durable designs.

A closer look at this beautiful antique pearls necklace with a centre motif featuring a sapphire and eight diamonds

The difference between this necklace and the first one in the post, is that the part with the sapphire and diamonds in this necklace is not used as a clasp – it is purely there for decorative reasons.  As a result it is referred to as the centre motif, and it looks a little something like this when worn:

Oh go on then, I will model the necklace to show you what it looks like on!  (yep, without doubt the best part about working in an antique jewellery shop!!)  

So there we have it – the difference between a clasp and a centre motif in antique jewellery (and of course also in modern jewellery, but I haven’t seen too many of these designs around in contemporary pieces – but if you have then please feel free to share with us below!)  Have a lovely weekend my dear!

All of the necklaces above can be found at Richard Ogden in the Burlington Arcade.

Victorian Pearl Necklace with a Diamond Clasp

“You can’t ever go wrong with pearls. Perhaps pearls are a girl’s best friend after all.” 

– Ki Hackney

Mid-Victorian pearl necklace with a diamond brooch as a clasp at Richard Ogden

Oh dear oh dear, yesterday was such a dream-day in the antique shop!  I was able to look closer at this Mid-Victorian pearl necklaces with a diamond clasp, and some of you will recognise the photo above from Instagram yesterday.

Mid-Victorian pearl necklace with a diamond brooch as a clasp

What I just love about Victorian jewellery is that the pieces are so often two-in-one, with the most clever little functions that you never would have expected.  With this necklace the secret is that the diamond clasp, which the ladies would wear so beautifully to the side, is detachable!  Since mass-productions hadn’t been invented yet, everything was handmade and very well thought through, and people didn’t own hundreds and hundreds of pieces of jewellery, so if a piece could double as two it would have been a very welcome addition to someone’s jewellery collection.

A close up of the diamond brooch which also functions as the clasp here

This pearl necklace is circa 1870 and again I am just so taken by the amazing condition of it, even after 150 years!  The pearls are so beautiful and the clasp is intact.  If you look a little closer at the centre diamond in the photo above, you will see that it is an old diamond because there is a teeny tiny “hole” in the middle of the stone.  It looks like a round dot, can you see it?  This is such a typical characteristic of an old diamond which I just love, as it brings an air of history and romance.

This “dot” in the middle of the diamond is there because the bottom point of the diamond has been polished flat, instead of pointy – (you get pointy in modern diamonds).  Hundreds of years ago the diamond cutters didn’t have the same advanced technology as we do today when it came to polishing diamonds, so instead of risk losing a piece of the diamond by trying to make a pointy culet, they reverted to making them flat.  So when you look into the stone from above the flat culet at the bottom will look like a little dot in the middle of the stone!

The design at the back of the brooch

Here is the back of the clasp, which you can see is very well designed with all diamonds in place and a complicated mechanism to detach it from the necklace.

The clasp can be turned into a brooch thanks to the mechanics on the back

We are going to look at the difference in Clasps and Brooch Centre Motifs in the next post, because I thought that they were the same thing, but this beautiful sapphire and pearl necklace decided to prove me wrong:

Pearl necklace with a diamond and sapphire centre motif

 

A Trifari Vintage Treasure

Good morning my lovely, I hope you had a nice weekend!  Mine was just wonderful as I was out in the countryside and it turned out that the monthly Village Antique Fair was on, which I decided to pop by early on Sunday morning.  I spent over an hour browsing through everything from old clocks and watches to photographs from the 19th century (when people would only have their photo taken once in their lifetime, so you can imagine what a big day it was and how important it was to wear their very finest clothes and jewellery!), loads of jewellery and other objets d’art.

Vintage Trifari necklace – not in its original box

I soon stopped by one of my favourite jewellery stands, where I was shown this gold coloured vintage Trifari necklace, covered in rhinestones.  It had the Trifari hallmark on the clasp and I believe that it is from the 50s or 60s.  It is always so lovely to see pieces in perfect condition, with all the design features intact for us to admire.

A closer look at the Trifari necklace

I know that I have mentioned Trifari before, and I thought that the necklace gives us the perfect excuse to look at the history of this famous jewellery company:

Trifari was founded in New York in 1925 by Gustavo Trifari, Leo F Krussman and Carl M Fishel in New York.  Gustavo Trifari came from Naples, where he had been trained by his grandfather in his little goldsmith workshop.  When he moved to New York in 1902 he initially worked for a company called Weinberg and Sudzen, and after ten years his started his own company together with Leo F Krussman, and simply decided to call it Trifari and Krussman.  

In 1925 Carl Fishel joined and this is by many seen as the start of the company, but others only consider the firm to have been complete in 1930, when Alfred Philippe became the head designer.  Philippe produced some of the company’s most recognisable pieces, and with a background designing high end jewellery for companies like Cartier and Van Cleef & Arples you can understand what an air of elegance and luxury he would have added to the designs.

Despite the rationing during the war, Trifari flourished and produced some of their finest pieces, which is quite remarkable since so many other companies drew their last breaths during these difficult years.  Gustavo Trifari passed away in 1952 and Krussman and Fishel continued without him until 1964 when their sons took over the business, and continued to run it for many years to come.

Mid-Victorian French Jet necklace in Cape Town

Good morning my dear, and what a beautiful morning it is here in London!  On my run along the Thames I couldn’t help but stop to admire the haze that lay so beautifully over the river.  The picture was perfected by four Canada geese flying so peacefully in formation, just a meter above the water surface toward the sunrise.  I hope you are able to take a few moments out of your busy day to take in little details like these around you, that can otherwise so easily slip us by.

Hazy London morning by the Thames

Now one of my favourite things with the blog is seeing the fabulous pieces from the Decades of Elegance-collection that have found new homes, being worn by their new owners!  You might remember the mid-Victorian French jet necklace whose acquaintance we made a few years ago here on the blog?  Well, it has belonged to my dear mama for quite some time now and she was wearing it around Cape Town, which I just couldn’t wait to share with you:

A young seal admiring the mid-Victorian French Jet necklace 

I have already posted a few photos on Instagram of the entertaining seal family in Kalk Bay – they put on quite the show when the fishing boats come in to offload their catch!  In the photo above you can see how one of them is very curious about our little photo shoot, and he kept swimming around and doing little tricks for us.

A black necklace is so versatile as it matches more or less everything in your wardrobe.  I love the combination of blue, white and black here.

mid-Victorian French Jet necklace, Kalk Bay, Cape Town

So all of you lovely ladies who have a piece of Decades of Elegance at home: do send me a photo and I will post it here for the rest of the world to see!  Happy Friday my sweets, hope you have a wonderful weekend!