Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
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Item Ships From: Berkshires
Antique Amuletic Dozen RockCrystals CagedRing Medieval Style Gilt Bronze Pendant
Located in Chicago, IL
This antique amuletic bronze framed pendant cages a dozen 7mm-diameter single-cut rock crystals that each feature a table-cut decagon crown, deep pavilion, 21 facets and uncut girdle, while the culets range from off-center to blunted. They are tightly set within four linked rings to overlap at the same angle in a sparkling single row. Seeming to retain a little of its original yellow-gold gilding on just the interior, the frame that surrounds each of the four sections of three crystals enables them to reflect pale-yellow-and-lime light when the pendant is viewed from certain angles.
Suggesting French heritage, the Medieval Frankish culture in northern France made jewelry in similar segmented or openwork shapes of wheels or whorls, which were worn as gem-decorated disk-shaped brooches or gold-caged rock...
Category
18th Century French Renaissance Antique Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Crystal, Rock Crystal, Gilt Metal, Bronze, Copper
Couture Fruit HandPainted WoodCherries RedGreenCharms ChainLink Vintage Necklace
Located in Chicago, IL
This vintage cherry-fruit charm necklace featuring red hand-painted wood is constructed of silver chain links and its clasp extension-chain is decorated with a single red bead. The green leaves that trim the berry beads are a surprising two-tone plastic, indicating that they were also handcrafted.
Notably, the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli is famous for including custom plastic elements in her mostly unsigned jewelry that accompanied her couture collections in the late 1930s.
Please see TheMet online archive to view Schiaparelli's most well-known couture necklace structured from plastic supporting metal insects...
Category
20th Century Art Deco Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Silver, Silver Plate, Gilt Metal
Trifari Philippe1940s JellyBelly & PearlFlowers GoldPendants SignedChainNecklace
By Alfred Philippe for Trifari
Located in Chicago, IL
Among the most in-demand designs by Trifari artistic director Alfred Philippe were his flora and "jelly belly" fauna jewelry from the 1940s. Both iconic styles can be mixed as the go...
Category
1940s American Modern Vintage Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Pearl, Gold, Vermeil, Yellow Gold
1950sRobertGoosensStyle CastOakLeaf Talisman BaroqueFauxPearls GoldChain Sautoir
Located in Chicago, IL
While contracted as an independent craftsman to create one-of-a-kind costume jewelry for French Masion Degorce from 1953 until it closed in 1957, Parisian goldsmith Robert Goosens (1927-2016) was initially commissioned by Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel to craft one-of-a-kind Byzantine-style long decorative-chain necklaces with sculptural gilt-metal or faux-pearl charms, while she intended to layer many of them to accessorize her couture clothing for clients and herself.
Relevant to the unclear designer of our vintage nine-pendant ribbed-chain sautoir with an unsigned gold-gilt silver barrel clasp and five unique kinds of intricately textured vermeil and baroque faux-pearl charms, a similar lost-wax-cast center pendant with three-lobed-foliate prongs also in the shape of oak leaves can be seen in the book (p.28), Bijoux de Haute Couture: Collection Robert Goossens, by Gilles Plazy and Chantal Bizot published in Paris in 2000. The same year, that Chanel-signed pendant necklace was auctioned by Christie's in a lot including an unsigned long chain sautoir attributed to Chanel. Further, another 1stDibs dealer currently has a $12,500 listing for an unsigned but book-published early-1950s faux-pearl sautoir for Chanel that also features intricate pinecone talismans like ours, but decorated with poured glass and crystals crafted by Maison Gripoix.
When Chanel relaunched her post-war business ventures, Goosens soon became her favorite parurier before founding his eponymous Maison Goosens, whose venerable workshop later designed metal work for its own jewelry-and-furnishings brand Goosens Paris.
Notably, Chanel did not add a brand signature to costume jewelry until the late 1950s, while some pieces prior to this by multiple paruriers are documented to lack any identification that Chanel was earlier known to stamp such as "France", "Made In France" and/or "Depose". Recently, a similar unsigned/unmarked longer chain sautoir with fewer filigree-and-pearl pendants that was believed to be by Robert Goosens for Chanel...
Category
1950s French Byzantine Vintage Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Pearl, Yellow Gold, Gilt Metal, Silver, Vermeil
Original by Robert Pearl and Rhinestone Brooch/Pendant
By Original by Robert
Located in Alford, MA
Wreath-shaped brooch of various pearls, rhinestones, crystals, and micro gold beads by Robert, c.1960. Hook in addition to pin, so can be worn as pendant. Some of the Original by Robert...
Category
Mid-20th Century American Retro Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Crystal, Pearl
16thCentury RockCrystal Hogback ScissorCut Silver High Relief Scrollwork Pendant
Located in Chicago, IL
In a rare scissor cut dating to the 1500s, this centuries-old prong-set hogback rock-crystal pendant produces a fascinating play of refractions in low light. With its rectangular nar...
Category
16th Century European Renaissance Antique Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Crystal, Rock Crystal, Silver
Bakelite 1930s German ArtDeco GoldRinged EmeraldBallPendants ChainLink Necklace
Located in Chicago, IL
Most likely made in Germany during the Art Deco period, this vintage unsigned long heavy 12-pendant gold-gilt chain-link bib necklace features ball charms of gold-ringed emerald-green matte Bakelite. Hanging 13-inches from the back of the neck, the long necklace is constructed with elegant double-ring links, while it fastens with a large toggle and decorative bar.
Each end of the toggle bar resembles stacked balls, recalling the oval-cartouche stacked-cannonball signature of German jewelry chain-specialist Jakob Bengel, who founded his business in Idar-Oberstein in 1873. Due to WWII, the Bengel factory, which is now a museum, permanently closed. His pre-1940 unsigned designs were largely overlooked until his factory catalogues were rediscovered decades later, which enabled 21st-Century books to be published about one of the leading manufacturers of Art Deco costume jewelry. Bengel pieces without the cartouche can be distinguished by thin metal chain links combined with single or bi-color Bakelite pendants in repeating geometric shapes like balls, semi-circles, rectangles, bars, rings or ribbed texture.
As Germany was the first country to license Bakelite for factory production since the 1910s, during the next 20 years its costume-jewelry designers began to feature locally-produced colorful Bakelite instead of glass or early semi-synthetic plastics. Between the world wars during poor economic conditions in Germany, its jewelry producers who were manufacturing for export were not motivated to stamp their country on such products.
The design of this Bakelite-charm necklace seems inspired by one-of-a-kind chunkier-chain charm necklaces commissioned for couture clothing ensembles by international fashion leader Parisian Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel. She only produced her trend-setting commissioned jewelry...
Category
1930s German Art Deco Vintage Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Yellow Gold, Base Metal, Gilt Metal
Dolce & Gabbana 1999 RunwayAccessory Silk Rosette Flower Cufflink Or Boutonniere
By Dolce & Gabbana
Located in Chicago, IL
Dolce & Gabbana featured silk-rose jewelry like this versatile pale-peach seven-inch-diameter accessory on many of the runway looks from the design-duo's Spring/Summer 2000 collection (see photo). The rose is a signature motif of this pair of Italian designers, while the Dolce & Gabbana brand tag is sewn to the back of this piece that was "Made in Italy" in 1999.
The unusual "cufflink" hardware on the back of the faux rose enables it to be secured through a buttonhole or as a pendant for a necklace, neckerchief, or narrow belt...
Category
1990s Italian Romantic Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Base Metal
16thCentury Renaissance Silver Repousse Lovers Pendant Or Engagement Hat Badge
Located in Chicago, IL
This early 16th-Century Renaissance silver-repousse round medallion "lovers" pendant depicts a romantic encounter in a rural landscape between a man and smiling woman wearing Europea...
Category
16th Century French Renaissance Antique Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Silver, Gilt Metal
Couture 1930s ElsaSchiaparelliStyle FuchsiaFauxRubyGoldGlassBeads Tassel Sautoir
Located in Chicago, IL
Elsa Schiaparelli famously embraced "shocking pink" for her Surrealist-aesthetic couture clothing and handcrafted costume jewelry, which she commissioned from Parisian paruriers beginning in the late 1920s--when some of the most expensive gems were fuchsia Burmese rubies. In this antique glass-beaded sautoir tassel necklace, 37 unusual fuchsia faux-pearls are each delicately caged like hot-air balloons by seven textural strands of faux-pearl-and-gold seed beads. These spherical stations are spaced by lustrous white medium-size faux pearls, ending in a four-strand seed-bead tassel that cages four of the fuchsia beads. The beads are strung on bright magenta silk cord without a clasp.
Sautoirs were an essential element of flapper style since Schiaparelli's couture-mentor Paul Poiret changed the silhouette of clothing in the 1920s, while the long necklaces remained popular until wartime 1939.
To compete with her rival couturier Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel, Schiaparelli (1890-1973) relied on the same French glassmakers, Maison Gripoix and Louis Rousselet--the masters of faux pearls at the time who added organic-ingredient coatings to their handmade glass beads. Either glass workshop that was established by the 1920s could have been commissioned to make the progressive hot-pink pearls for this unsigned necklace that dates to the Art-Deco period.
The design of this highly-textural tricolor sautoir featuring fuchsia spheres could suit the style of one of Schiaparelli's most frequent paruriers through the 1930s, Jean Clement. Some of his relevant unsigned work for Schiaparelli is in museum collections like The Met, including highly-textural tricolor sphere-decorated buttons/brooches and a fuchsia-toned metal-rosebud bead necklace.
After Schiaparelli had become associated with fuchsia, she made particularly prolific use of this bright magenta in the late 1930s. In her demi-couture collections such as "Circus" and "Comedia del' Arte" (see our 3 photos), fuchsia jackets are adorned with similar colorful spherical glass beads among embroidered appliques and animal/clown brooches, as well as whimsical painted-ceramic buttons...
Category
1930s French Art Deco Vintage Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Pearl, Gold
KineticPuppetStringsPinocchio GoldTexturedChainLink3Strand Early20thC. Necklace
Located in Chicago, IL
Acquired in The States and likely inspired by the American 1938-commissioned animated-feature movie, Pinocchio, that was produced for two years by Walt Disney based on an Italian children's story, this unsigned pre-WWII yellow-gold-gilt brass necklace with elegant draping chains features a three-inch-long playful kinetic multi-textured faux-carved-wood puppet-on-strings pendant with pointed hat, filigree-capped collar and waist, and flexible geometric-shaped limbs. Structured with three chains, notice the additional texture on the slightly larger links of the upper necklace.
Unlike the movie, as the marionette on our necklace wears a lace-like collar resembling the original character illustrated by Enrico Mazzanti in the book by Tuscany-born Carlo Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883), the necklace otherwise could date no earlier than the turn of the 19th Century when the spring-ring clasp was first in use. Since that time, Pinocchio became one of the most reimagined characters in literature based on multiple authors whose protagonist was a similar anthropomorphic puppet.
To be conservative about its age as the necklace is in good condition, we suspect that Austrian-born Hattie Carnegie commissioned it to accessorize her "hat-to-hem" custom-made or ready-to-wear clothing that frequently featured amusing figural subjects with articulated parts, such as mythical creatures, fauna or clowns. Before her death at the age 69 in 1956, not all of the pieces in the costume-jewelry parures of her eponymous brand since 1919 were signed, while based on experience we assume that at least clip earrings accompanied this creative necklace...
Category
Early 20th Century American Artisan Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Yellow Gold, Gilt Metal, Brass
MiriamHaskell 1926-1929 Shell Glass FauxPearl Crystal Silver Art Deco Sautoir
By Frank Hess for Miriam Haskell
Located in Chicago, IL
In the late 1920s during the Art-Deco period, this Miriam Haskell white mostly glass-beaded sautoir was created in New York City by her first designer Frank Hess. This uniquely hand-...
Category
1920s American Art Deco Vintage Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Crystal, Pearl, Freshwater Pearl, Natural Pearl, Coral, Silver
Miriam Haskell 1930 Fringe Glass & BrassBar Pendants ChainLink Art Deco Necklace
By Frank Hess for Miriam Haskell
Located in Chicago, IL
Featuring a relatively heavy fringe of dangling Russian-gilt brass bars and contrasting French-blue textural hand-pressed glass beads topped with filigree caps to resemble flower bud...
Category
1930s American Art Deco Vintage Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Brass, Yellow Gold, Gilt Metal
Couture Late1920s ChanelRousseletStyle Pearlescent Pendants SilverChain Necklace
Located in Chicago, IL
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...
Category
1920s French Art Deco Vintage Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Brass, Gilt Metal, Silver
18thC EnamelDoublePainting SilverFiligree SpanishRococo AprilBirthday Pendant
Located in Chicago, IL
This early 18th-Century Spanish Rococo period silver-filigree double-sided pendant with dangle features miniature colorful enamel devotional paintings on both sides of a white porcelain centerpiece, which are associated with an April birth.
One side depicts a mountain landscape with a haloed richly-robed dark woman holding a lap-seated dark child and a holy orb...
Category
Early 18th Century Spanish Rococo Antique Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Silver, Enamel
Givenchy 1976TheMet Signed GG Logo GiltBarPendant SnakeChain TwoTone Choker
By Givenchy
Located in Chicago, IL
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...
Category
1970s American Contemporary Vintage Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Gilt Metal, Gold, Silver
Trifari 1940s Philippe 4PieceParure CrystalFloraMotif GoldNecklaceEarringsBrooch
By Alfred Philippe for Trifari
Located in Chicago, IL
In the late 1940s, Trifari French-born artistic director Alfred Philippe, who had earlier created fine jewelry for Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels, designed this flora-motif crystal-s...
Category
Mid-20th Century American Art Deco Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Crystal, Diamond, Gold, Gold Plate, Yellow Gold
ART Large Necklace/Brooch
By Arthur Pepper
Located in Alford, MA
An impressive piece by ART, founded in New York in the late 1940s as Mode-Art by Arthur Pepper, which can be worn as a necklace or brooch when the neck chain is detached. The central cinquefoil element features five green cabochon stones and clear crystals of various size from which descend one long tassel and two short ones. All in bright gold tone metal with different finishes. Back of central element has pin and loop for attaching chain; marked "ART" with copyright sign.
Length of chain: 17"
Pendant with tassel...
Category
Mid-20th Century American Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Artist Modern Sculptural SterlingSilverWire Script Letter H or Acrobat Pendant
Located in Chicago, IL
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...
Category
Mid-20th Century American Modern Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Sterling Silver
Trifari 1970s Necklace and Chandelier Earrings
Located in Alford, MA
c.1960s-'70s Trifari necklace and earrings set, the necklace comprised of three gold chains, the shortest of which features a large pendant with free-...
Category
Mid-20th Century American Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
ArtNouveau Carved Abalone 18K WhiteGold HighRelief Asymmetric Flora&Bird Pendant
Located in Chicago, IL
This 20th-Century Art-Nouveau style 18-karat white-gold-plated highly textural pendant features a prong-set abalone that is carved into seemingly overlapping flower petals in lustrou...
Category
Early 20th Century American Art Nouveau Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Pearl, 18k Gold, White Gold
16thCentury Renaissance Ultramarine Angel GiltFiligree Crystal Medallion Pendant
Located in Chicago, IL
With artistic value as a Renaissance chiaroscuro miniature painting with precious ultramarine lapis-lazuli pigment, this early 16th-Century period gilt-filigree silver pendant medall...
Category
16th Century Italian Renaissance Antique Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Crystal, Silver, Enamel, Copper, Gold
Antique 8 BallCutMoonstones French BelleEpoque GiltFiligree Earrings & Necklace
Located in Chicago, IL
This antique French Belle-Epoque-period set incudes eight rare ball-cut moonstones beaded on a delicate gilt choker necklace and wire-hook dangle earrings for pierced ears. The necklace features two 12mm gilt-filigree-capped moonstones with atypical adularescence that glows as a sharply defined wide bluish-white circle below the surface. The pearl-like grayish-white moonstones are among beaded stations of cut-glass crystal that are spaced with tiny gilt balls. The matching earrings each feature a 6mm moonstone like the additional four on the necklace.
The luminous moonstone beads look like quahog-clam pearls...
Category
1910s French Belle Époque Vintage Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Crystal, Moonstone, Brass, Gold, Gilt Metal
Mimi Di N 1981 GoldGiltMetal Set Pinecone Sprays ConvertiblePendants BeltBuckles
By Mimi di N
Located in Chicago, IL
This highly-textural gold-gilt metal two-piece belt buckle or convertible pendant depicting sprays. of pine cones and needles was designed by Mimi di N in 1981, as noted in the signe...
Category
1980s American Artisan Vintage Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Gilt Metal, Yellow Gold
Antique ArtNouveau Tourmaline Gems & Lampwork Glass WhiteGold Filigree Sautoir
Located in Chicago, IL
Epitomizing the Art Nouveau movement, this antique post-1912 sautoir drop necklace with a white-gold openwork-and-wire pendant and filigree clasp features a rainbow of handcrafted gem beads--the largest of which are carved "Rose of France" and purple amethysts plus faceted-pink and beveled-aqua tourmalines--along with what appears to be lampwork glass...
Category
Early 20th Century Unknown Art Nouveau Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Amethyst, Tourmaline, White Gold, Enamel, Rhodium, Gilt Metal
French MidCentury Bazot 18KGoldPouredGlassEnameledPlaques SilverPendantsNecklace
By Andree Bazot
Located in Chicago, IL
Acquired in France and featuring French studio-artist Andree Bazot's signature technique of topping free-formed layers of polychrome enamels fused on textural foiled plaques with a d...
Category
Mid-20th Century French Artisan Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Silver, Enamel, Copper, Gold, 18k Gold
Unique Vintage Handcrafted Hammered 6BrassWires SpiralsLoopsSquiggles Pendant
Located in Chicago, IL
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...
Category
Mid-20th Century European Modernist Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Brass
Artist 1980s NevelsonStyle Sculptural GiltMetal Crushed Jagged Pendant Necklace
By Contemporary
Located in Chicago, IL
Louise Nevelson, an American modern sculptor who enhanced found objects throughout the 20th Century, in the 1980s transformed crushed and gilt metal in...
Category
1980s American Artist Vintage Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Brass, Gilt Metal
Antique ProngSetWhiteJade GoldMilgrainFiligree ConvertibleBrooch RingTop Pendant
Located in Chicago, IL
Known as "mutton fat", a natural milky white tremolite nephrite jade 10mm-long hand-carved oval cabochon is prong set on this antique Edwardian-period convertible tiny brooch...
Category
Early 20th Century Chinese Art Nouveau Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Jade, Gilt Metal, White Gold
Unique MidCentury Handcrafted Hammered 6BrassWires SpiralsLoopsSquiggles Pendant
Located in Chicago, IL
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...
Category
Mid-20th Century European Modernist Berkshires - Pendant Necklaces
Materials
Brass
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