Presentworth Jewelry

Featuring 12 large patinated pearlescent charms distinctly handcrafted by Parisian Louis Rousselet--the master glass-and-metal-ornament parurier for French couture fashion houses since 1920--this heavy silver chain necklace is made in the unique chunky style of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel that she introduced in the late 1920s. Capping Rousselet's signature Art-Deco-period handmade beads, his intricate multi-texture metal tops for these balls resemble organic shapes like the stems of acorns or fruit. In a bib arrangement, the duotone reflective heavy spheres--in black glass, blue-gray enameled galalith, and silver metal--conform to the cleavage of the wearer. Aside from chain jewelry commissioned by Chanel, Rousselet-style jewelry was usually constructed with thin wires or braided string to enable his beads to attract the most attention. Notably, this necklace fastens with an enlarged spring-ring clasp that became associated with increasingly heavy Chanel costume jewelry. Like 1920s Chanel jewelry by Rousselet, the necklace is both unmarked for French origin and unsigned. In subsequent decades, variations of chunky-charm chain necklaces were reproduced by Chanel with her other paruriers using different materials in which they specialized, such as a similar Chanel-signed piece in the 1960s by bronze-maker Maison Denez...

Gabrielle "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 a mixed-bead ...

From the same 1976 collection by Hubert de Givenchy (1927-2018) as this metallic necklace, TheMet acquired a similar design (accession 1984.598.41). Without the rhinestones of the mu...

Kenneth Jay Lane--whose monogram KJL is signed on the white-rose-decorated gold-tone clasp of this double-strand black-resin beaded necklace--is only one of four bylined jewelry designers collected by The Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection At The Metropolitan Museum of Art from the two-decade period between 1970-1989, which was dominated by such bold big shapes in mostly black, white and gold. A must for any collector of the world-renowned American-founded beauty-brand Avon, its rare limited-edition retailed necklace by Lane titled "Midnight Rose" is among the most distinctive that it produced among its lines of primarily perfume, cosmetics, and personal-care products whose origin dates back to 1886 in New York. Notably, the life-sized shiny cast-acrylic rose has the look of a far more expensive carved stone, such as one cut and polished from light-filled saturated-white chalcedony, which is a hard semi-precious stone favored by Lane. Like Lane's own line when it was originally signed KJL, the decorated clasp is uniquely designed. It locks underneath with a semi-circular hinge, which enables the stylized three-dimensional smooth rose to be perfectly positioned on the right side of the upper chest with the bud facing upwards above its three-leaf sepal in contrasting gilt textured metal. This position adds sparkle from above to the three pave rhinestones in a gold-tone setting at center of the rose, as if its dew-covered bud was beginning to open in strong moonlight. To balance the bold rose shape, the black strands cross each other below at a single point, which adds another eye-catching element to the concealed-string-tied necklace. In mint condition with no sign of wear, the necklace was acquired in its original lavender Avon retail box. In contrast, the paper shows wear and tear from handling, while still featuring the jewelry designer's full-name script signature, title, and text details like how to care for this synthetic jewelry. The metal-stamped hallmark is "KJL for Avon...

This handcrafted faux-sapphire-topped-pearl cluster brooch and clip-earrings set dates to around WWII, when fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli (18...

Like Alexander Calder's handmade wire jewelry since 1929, whose smallest one-of-a-kind sculptural subjects ranged from aerial acrobats and dancers to mono...

Louise Nevelson, an American modern sculptor who enhanced found objects throughout the 20th Century, in the 1980s transformed crushed and gilt metal in...

Since 1920, French costume-jewelry glass-master Louis Rousselet was among a handful of paruriers favored by the leading Parisian couture houses, primarily Chanel. Beyond the stamped ...

For Trifari by mid-century, its artistic director French-born Alfred Philippe designed this yellow-gold set including the seven-bar linked collar with central invisibly-set diamante,...

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

Strongly resembling the Harry Bertoia Foundation's archived c.1947 unsigned small brooch (D.JE.27) that is essentially an elegant hammered silver curvilinear three-humped squiggle by...

Like the pendant collected by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, this bezel-set lava rock was handcrafted as a modern sterling silver brooch by studio-artist Joan Parcher...

This vintage handcrafted brass-wire pendant was shaped and hammered into lively three-dimensional spirals, loops and squiggles with wrapped construction by an unknown 20th-Century st...

This vintage handcrafted brass-wire pendant was shaped and hammered into lively three-dimensional spirals, loops and squiggles with wrapped construction by an unknown 20th-Century st...

This antique late-Victorian Italian Murano-glass unsigned necklace features three oblong red beads with miniature multicolor swirled-stripe patterns made with the millefiori techniqu...