Antique ArtDeco French LampworkGlass GalalithFans SilverRondelles 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...

With a distinct silver twisted toggle clasp and multiple kinds of nubby rondelles dating to the late 1920s, Parisian parurier Louis Rousselet's workshop handcrafted this glass beaded...

Like elegant multi-pendant festoon necklaces from the mid-1800s, this antique 19th-Century Italian glass choker collar by the Seguso family that founded Vetri d'Arte on the Venetian island of Murano features three one-inch-drop pendants, which here include reddish pink mouth-blown glass balls with golden reflections that are supported by brass findings and unusual ecru glass links that form a chain. The handcrafted closed links appear to be miniature versions of the style made famous in the next century by the family's descendant Archimede Seguso (1909-1999), whom Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel worked...

Robert Goosens, the French haute-couture Chanel-favorite parurier who enjoyed reinterpreting ancient and antique styles of jewelry with rock crystal and faux stones, also collaborated with Madame Alix Gres. Relevant to this statement necklace, the Parisian theatrical-costume designer, who founded the French fashion-house Maison Gres, commissioned Goosens to make spiral-wire adornments for her couture gowns. This handmade hammered brass wire choker necklace with five dropped en-tremblant pendants is decorated with unique colorful beads and wrapped wire. The piece dates between 1969-1971 based on similar unsigned spiraled-wire metal jewelry without goldsmithing marks in the museum collection of TheMet (see our photo), which acquired it from Maison Givenchy founder Hubert de Givenchy, who was one of most supportive fans of Gres. Like the legendary sculptural clothing designs of Madame Gres, this necklace was inspired by Greco-Roman costumes, while its sculpted shapes by Goosens reference her signature curvilinear fabric techniques that earned her the sobriquet of "the master of the wrapped and draped dress". Goosens (1927-2016), nicknamed Monsieur Bijou, also made jewelry inspired by other periods of antiquity to compliment the couture clothing of Coco Chanel, Cristobal Balenciaga, Elsa Schiaparelli, Christian Dior, and Yves Saint Laurent. After Goosens collaborated with Gres, he revisited golden spiral designs with Saint Laurent. Similar to the free-flowing fabric manipulated in Gres gowns, this hand-shaped necklace that we photographed in sunlight is a study in motion that drapes across a curvy cleavage. Adding drama to this necklace below its wire choker, the top teetering-wire pendant is a twisted and hammered horizontal double spiral, which is a Hellenistic symbol of life and transformation suggesting the breasts of a goddess of fertility and motherhood. Yet distinctly Goosens, 18 hand-cut and hand-dyed "ancient-Roman-blue" rock-crystal beads are wire-strung to weight a second tier of two separate vertical double-spiral pendants. On each, a wrapped-wire tube divides the blue beads. Between these vertical pendants in two tiers, the central vertical pendants each feature a one-of-a-kind multicolor bead (yellow/blue/red/black/white) in two lengths with abstract organic patterns recalling ancient Italian glasswork. Four more blue beads bracket these larger colorful beads. An additional 10 blue beads and 5 wire tubes decorate the bottom looped wire pendant, as well as the bottom of the wire choker. Like the hammered-wire jewelry designs of modern artist Alexander Calder, the creative complex construction of this necklace surprisingly required no metalsmith techniques, such as soldering or casting, just great skill with a jewelry pliers and hammer. For a bigger picture of couture clothing by Madame Gres during the decade beginning in 1969, she notably designed many museum-collected one-color silk-taffeta draped long gowns with empire waists and simple high collars or geometric cut-outs. Remarkably, the focal points for some of these unique dresses were at the wrists, from where long pouf sleeves voluminously droop around the hands to nearly the floor like two enormous long-petaled flowers. If paired with this equally downward-focused and balanced necklace from this same period, its bold Greco-Roman elements would have pulled a viewer's gaze of the dress from floor to face. Although there is no significant provenance for this necklace, hammered brass and tinted rock crystal were among the few materials repeatedly associated with Goosens from 1969-71. For example, in his overlapping interior-decor collections based on themes of waterlilies or foliage, Goosens hammered gilt brass wire and sheets (see our closeup photo) to represent plant parts or he wired rock-crystal beads to appear as tiny fruits. While the two multicolor glass or resin beads in this necklace are atypical, the combination of blue, yellow and red is a palette that the designer used for other pieces of rock-crystal jewelry and he created many kinds of multicolor faux stones with glass or resin paste, such as faux Tibetan turquoise including black and white. According to journalism based on interviews with Goosens, he often acquired unusual stones and glass for inspiration during his extensive travels exploring museum-collected antiquities. Since Maison Goosens was acquired in 2005 by Maison Chanel, it opened the Parisian showroom Galerie Goosens and associated shops to sell many kinds of reproductions and reimagined works by the founder, which fortunately does not suit the completely handmade elements of this necklace. So this couture piece remains one-of-a-kind. If desiring a vintage haute-couture original by Robert Goosens, we recommend perusing the Maison Goosens website so that a reproduction with a contemporary signature is not mistakenly purchased. Madame Gres (1903-1993) was born Germaine Emelie Krebs, but initially identified her fashion designs with the pseudonym Alix and later Alix Barton...

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

A classic Art Deco chrome and glass bead two row necklace, made from small chrome metal 'cups', fitting one inside another , to create a very fluid an...

Fabulous Art Deco silver tone necklace featuring clear glass ball beads with an embossed circle design, and rhinestone balls. Length 43.7cm / 17.2 inches, and the clear glass beads a...

Lorraine’s Bijoux Vintage Sterling Silver Art Nouveau Bow brooch , one of a kind, handmade necklace is on offer. This vintage, elegant, feminine, bow brooch is enhanced with marcasit...