Henry Schreiner Earrings

In 1956 when Christian Dior's ultra-feminine New Look had dominated fashion for nearly a decade, Schreiner New York handcrafted these opulent unsigned earrings with 22 prong-set open-back crystals to accompany the evening-wear of an American high-end fashion designer. They may have been for client Pauline Trigere when her ready-to-wear collections with accessories including unmarked-Schreiner jewelry were sold by NYC's Bergdorf Goodman and worn by her clients including Grace Kelly, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Elizabeth Taylor. Comparatively, Schreiner jewelry produced in the 1950s for direct sale to high-end department stores, such as Neiman Marcus, Henri Bendel and Saks Fifth Avenue, were the only pieces to include a brand signature. Using the best quality European crystals that were custom-made for him, the founder Henry Schreiner was among the world's leading glass-jewelry designers before he died in 1954, whereafter his daughter and her husband continued with their handcrafted production. The family shared this distinction with Western Germany-based Max Muller and Paris-based Roger Jean Pierre, who were commissioned to create haute-couture pieces for the world's leading fashion houses. Notably in 1949, Henry Schreiner was commissioned by Dior to create several exclusive pieces. We know these earrings were not created earlier than 1956 because of the use of iridescent coating on some of the crystals that produces a rainbow effect. Known as aurora-borealis (AB) stones, Swarovski initially produced them exclusively for a haute-couture collection that year by Dior. Shortly thereafter, the Schreiner team had access to such colorful stones, and most certainly used them as soon as possible to enable their American fashion-designer clients to compete with the new Dior iridescent-colors trend. As Schreiner introduced its "ruffle" settings in 1957, we can see that they evolved from a smaller ruffle the year prior that is present on the tips of the marquise-shaped pale yellow stones...

Henry Schreiner, the Austrian-born blacksmith founder of Schreiner in New York in 1932, handcrafted this demi-parure of prong-set clear crystal stylized-foliage sprays after he began...