Art Deco Brass and Glass Bead Choker

Although this necklace does not depict a traditional scenic Swiss image, it features the fine Swiss enamel craft, dating from the early Victorian (ca1850s) era! Crafted in vibrant 18...

A fabulous strand of amber beads from the Vintage (ca1960s) era! This wonderful necklace is comprised of 29 butterscotch Baltic amber beads, which are hand-strung on yellow string to...

Magnificent French Art Deco Paste and Givree Glass Bead Sautoir composed of hundreds of paste "buttons" wired to form looped links. Hand blown, h...

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...