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