About Antique Costume Jewelry

Antique costume jewelry refers to jewelry made before the 1970s. It's highly collectible, and some of the older pieces sell for a large sum of money. Each time period and generation had its own material that was popular, including Lucite and paste pieces.

Bakelite

One of the more popular types of vintage costume jewelry is composed of a material known as Bakelite, which was the precursor to modern day plastic. Bakelite was created in the early 1920s and was a popular material for jewelry until the 1940s. Warmer colors were often used with Bakelite, including shades of brown, red, orange and yellow. It was sometimes mixed with metal pieces to create different pieces of jewelry, such as broaches and pins.

Vintage Plastic

Plastic has been around for years but wasn't used until the 1940s and 1950s for jewelry making. While some people wouldn't consider this time period antique, experts classify pieces from this time as antique or vintage. The plastics used were often brighter in tone than similar Bakelite pieces. They also tended to mix colors such as white with green or red with blue. The process made it easier to create a mix of colors in pieces including bracelets, rings and earrings.

Metal

Aluminum pieces of costume jewelry often date to the 1910s and even earlier, but it's rare to see pieces of this style from the 1920s. In the 1920s, Americans worried that using aluminum could result in serious health problems, and when sales dropped, manufacturers switched to different types of metal, including gold and silver. Steel was also used as a substitute and as a way for people without a lot of money to afford costume jewelry that looked more expensive.

Celluloid

Celluloid costume jewelry began appearing in the 1860s. Today, it is one of the hardest types of antique costume jewelry to find because the material degrades quickly. The material was sometimes used to mimic ivory, and many of the jewelry pieces from this period that look like ivory are actually made of celluloid. It was available in pins, cuff links, necklaces, bracelets and rings. It's discernible from ivory: A lit match placed on the back of celluloid will leave a dark brown spot.

Paste

Antique costume jewelry often didn't use real stones or gems, but instead used paste as a substitute. This is especially true of pieces made during the 1930s, when people couldn't afford expensive jewelry because of the Great Depression. Earlier pieces used paste as a type of material that was highly popular, and some people even preferred it over real stones. The manufacturer took pieces of glass, polished them and cut them into the shape of gemstones before adding them to the jewelry.