Carrera Y Carrera Panther Earrings

Legendary Spanish jewelry house Carrera y Carrera is based in Madrid but its sculptural and wholly distinctive pieces are known all over the world. Devotees of the company’s luxurious rings, necklaces, bracelets and other adornments have included royalty and a range of high-profile pop culture figures, and its artisans’ expertise in jewelry design spans a history of more than 130 years.

The origins of Carrera y Carrera can be traced to a small shop in 1885 founded by Madrid native Saturio Carrera. A student of lapidary — the practice of carving and shaping stones and minerals — Saturio established a modest jewelry business, and later, his son, José, who studied jewelry design in Paris, took up the family business and opened a new shop near the old center of Spain’s capital city. José passed the firm onto his nephews, and Carrera y Carrera garnered international acclaim when the Spanish royal family awarded them their first royal commission in 1960 to craft a bridal tiara to be presented to Doña Fabiola de Mora y Aragón on her wedding day. This tiara — the house’s most prestigious piece to date — raised Carrera y Carrera’s profile significantly.

During the 1970s, the luxury house first presented their designs at the epicenter of international jewelry, Baselworld. Carrera y Carrera became a household name for Americans of means thanks to a distribution partnership that landed its offerings in the Cellini boutique at New York City’s Waldorf Astoria. Celebrities such as Sofía Vergara, Jennifer Lopez and Madonna have all worn custom Carrera y Carrera jewels on the red carpet, and the brand’s work has been exhibited at the Armoury Chamber in the Kremlin. Each of the brand’s unique designs for watches and other jewelry — which frequently draw on animal forms, mythology and art — are still made by hand, just as its founder intended.

Find vintage Carrera y Carrera jewelry today on 1stDibs.

In the United States, ear piercing didn’t really become popular until the 1950s and ‘60s, but our desire for a dazzling pair of vintage earrings has deeper roots than that. In fact, wearing earrings actually goes back thousands of years, and you can find many tangible connections between now and then in how we continue to talk about these treasured accessories.

Women wore ornamental earrings — studs and hoops at the very least — in Ancient Egypt, which is home to mines that are among the earliest sources of emeralds in the world. Emerald earrings are highly prized today, and their quality lies in their rich, saturated color. The highest-quality emeralds are green or bluish-green. Earrings worn by the affluent in early Roman civilizations were set with precious stones such as diamonds and pearls, and a clean-looking pop of pearl on the front of the lobe is as timeless as ever. Hoop earrings are imbued with symbolism and cultural significance for many, and on view in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Ancient Near Eastern Art Gallery is a pair of simple gold hoops from Mesopotamia dating to between 2600 and 2500 B.C.

Today, ear piercing is very popular all over the world, and, as a result, it is difficult to overstate how much everyone pines for a good pair of earrings — modernist drop earrings, glamorous Victorian hoops, geometrically complex chandelier earrings, you name it. Sure, jewelry trends and the fashion darlings of social media come and go, but earrings have a staying power that seems impenetrable: The still-strong love affair between British royals and Cartier earrings is more than a century old, glossy 1970s hoops from legacy houses such as Bulgari and Van Cleef & Arpels remain the statement makers they’ve always been and although people have been stacking earrings for many moons, the allure of an expertly mismatched stack of charms and studs still feels fresh and new.

While there is no shortage of modern earring designs to choose from, the classics, like coral earrings, Art Deco–style earrings and diamond drop earrings are still heavy hitters. On 1stDibs, find a wide range of antique, new and vintage earrings today.