Couture 1930s ChanelRousseletStyle GlassGold FauxCarnelianPearl Torsade Necklace

This antique rare hand-pressed-glass necklace features semi-translucent grape-green large beads that are capped with gilt-brass filigree. Based on the combination of bead seams, spring-ring clasp, and metal findings on the unmarked faux Chinese-jade necklace, it dates to the late Victorian period most likely from Western Europe. Around WWI, hand presses, which stamped molten glass into a mold to create a bead with a hole and a seam, were often used to produce costume jewelry as a cottage industry in Germany and the Czech region. This was while there was a lack of factory machine presses and finishing tumblers that used sand to polish out the seam lines. Another reason that the cloudy green beads can be identified as atypically hand-pressed is that they are more opaque and therefore harder and less prone to breaking during formation than fully-translucent glass, which was better suited for automated-machine pressing. Also the green beads are an unusual swirled color including white, which suggests that their production was more limited than machine-pressing would enable. Without the bead-seams, this necklace could be mistaken for one by Coco Chanel. Her 1920s couture...

Featuring yellow-gold sinuous-pattern rondelles and carnelian rock-crystal round 8mm beads, this ancient-revival heavy necklace is knotted in stations a...

Gabriel "Coco" Chanel's earliest fashion motifs of camellias, hearts, and topaz are combined in this Art-Deco period tightly silk-strung metallic-glass couture set of mixed-bead saut...

This Bakelite beaded double-strand black-and-gold necklace still sports the CoroCraft pegasus 1940s retail foil-tag. As an elegant take on "Xs-and-Os" representing hugs-and-kisses, t...

Long before Barbie, Elsa Schiaparelli famously embraced "shocking pink" for her Surrealist-aesthetic couture clothing and handcrafted costume jewelry, which she commissioned from Parisian paruriers beginning in the late 1920s--when some of the most expensive jewels were fuchsia Burmese rubies. In this antique glass-beaded sautoir tassel-necklace, 37 "shocking pink" balls are each delicately caged like hot-air balloons by seven textural strands of faux-pearl-and-gold seed beads. These spherical stations are spaced by lustrous white medium-size faux pearls, ending in a four-strand seed-bead tassel that cages four of the fuchsia faux pearls. The beads are strung on bright magenta silk cord without a clasp. Sautoirs were an essential element of flapper style since Schiaparelli's couture-mentor Paul Poiret changed the silhouette of clothing in the 1920s, while the long necklaces remained popular until wartime 1939. To compete with her rival couturier Gabriel "Coco" Chanel, Schiaparelli (1890-1973) relied on the same French glassmakers, Maison Gripoix and Louis Rousselet--the masters of faux pearls at the time who added organic-ingredient coatings to their handmade glass beads. Either glass workshop that was established by the 1920s could have been commissioned to make the progressive hot-pink pearls for this unsigned necklace that dates to the Art Deco period. The design of this highly-textural tri-color sautoir featuring fuchsia spheres particularly suits the style of one of Schiaparelli's most frequent paruriers through the 1930s, Jean Clement. Some of his relevant unsigned work for Schiaparelli is in museum collections like The Met, including highly-textural tri-color sphere-decorated buttons/brooches and a fuchsia-toned metal-rosebud bead necklace. After Schiaparelli had become associated with fuchsia, she made particularly prolific use of this bright magenta in the late 1930s. In her demi-couture collections such as "Circus" and "Comedia del' Arte" (see our 3 photos), fuchsia jackets are adorned with similar colorful spherical glass beads among embroidered appliques and animal/clown brooches, as well as whimsical painted-ceramic buttons...

Indicating that French-born Alfred Philippe designed this bicolor glass-beaded necklace between 1936 and 1955, the crown-topped Trifari signature appears without a U.S.-copyright sym...

Hakimoto By Jewel Of Ocean Manufacture Suggested Retail Price $240,000 31" Natural Golden Color 13x15mm South Sea Pearl Necklace 18K White Gold Full Diamond B...

Alex Jona design collection, hand crafted in Italy, 18 karat burnished white gold necklace, featuring 51.95 carats of black diamond faceted beads. Lenght: cm 90/in 35.43. Alex Jona ...

Alex Jona design collection, hand crafted in Italy, 18 karat rose gold keshi pearl and cabochon spinel (49,40 carats) sautoir long necklace (Total length: 35.5inch/90 cm). Alex Jon...

Thomas Leyser is renowned for his contemporary jewellery designs utilizing fine gemstones. This necklace with 26x ropes with Peridot beads (2.5mm) with a 18k White Gold Clasp set wi...

A Grand amber necklace, the 34 graduated carved amber beads with distinctive spangle inclusions, length 50cm, gross weight 263.8 grams This strikin...

A long cultured pearl rope necklace, the one hundred and thirty-two cultured pearls of cream colour, with diameter 9-9.5mm, strung and knotted, measuring approximately 132cm long, gr...