A discussion at Beadcollector.net early in 2013 started me on my exploration of Chinese cloisonne beads in Western costume jewelry, featuring pictures of a necklace found on Etsy and attributed to Miriam Haskell. In the dozen years since, harvesting pictures and purchasing examples has led to a sorting of designs into groups as described in previous posts. This is hopefully the last post I plan to do on this “Miriam Haskell Mystery,” as the necklaces and bracelets in this design suite seem likely to me to be post-World War II and the last incidence of actual Chinese-manufactured beads showing up in fashion jewelry until the 1970s, when the 20-year U.S. embargo on Chinese imports was lifted.
I could be entirely wrong on that dating guess, of course,
but the array of findings and beads and overall style is quite different from
what are likely pre-War late 1930s-pre-1941 designs. This seems to me consistent with the post-1945 revival of the Rhode Island jewelry factories once their machines were
re-tooled from wartime munitions production. Critical as well was the rage for
Dior’s 1947 “New Look” and coordinating opulent jewelry heavy with glass and
rhinestone components from Maison Gripoix and Swarovski.
“A new look required updated jewelry to accessorize these
more feminine styles. Out with the bulky Retro jewelry of the ‘40s and in with
beautifully crafted floral designs and other ladylike motifs such as bows.”
https://www.antiquetrader.com/collectibles/christian-dior-jewelry
“Oriental” charm jewelry of the 1950s is exemplified by
Eugene Bertolli’s “Chinese Lanterns” and “Shangri-la” designs for the Napier
Company – heavy, well-constructed bracelets composed of sculptural plated
castings and chains, the only imported Asian components being lampwork glass
beads from Japan.
https://napierbook.com/product/chunky-vintage-napier-shangri-la-charm-bracelet/
The designs in this post center around a distinctive double
rollo chain with a jeweled box clasp.
The finding and beads used are a more lavish step up from the related
bookchain designs described in the previous post, with which they share a
number of components and findings. While
there is apparently some doubt among collectors as to whether the bookchain
designs were products of the Miriam Haskell workshop, the manner in which they
seem to form a sequence with earlier designs as well as the jewelry in this
post makes me lean toward their being Haskell product lines. After all, if not
Haskell, what evidence is there for another designer to have produced this
range of related jewelry with its distinctive quirky assemblage and
manipulation of findings (instead of relying upon in-house casting and plating,
such as for Coro and Rice-Weiner)?
A marker for this suite of jewelry is the use of a
distinctive glass cylinder bead featuring “peppermint cane” stripes or a
speckled crumb surface. Where these
beads originated is a mystery – Japan? Venice? Czechoslovakia? On some compositions a turquoise glass Czech
“Egyptian revival” bead stands in for the lampwork glass cylinder, which seems
more than a little odd, unless the workshop was simply striving for an overall
“exotic” effect in keeping with the “Bakelite” urns, pitchers, and amphorae.
The jewelry examples in the following slides are arranged
very roughly in the chronological order of either their online sale or when I
discovered the pictures if no sales data was availabled (if you recognize a photo of yours and want attribution, just tell me). It was fun following
the internet breadcrumbs to track down the 2014 PBS television show “Market
Warriors” to discover that the necklace and earrings set had been purchased by
one of the show stars for $420 (he believed it was Chinese), only to achieve a disappointing
$125 in the subsequent show audience auction.
These pieces now sell for around a thousand dollars and up.
https://www.youtube.com/live/kyOphjaGxJg
There seems to have been some of the usual collector messing
around with the designs, rearranging dangles or adding substitutes according to
taste or need for repair. These pieces,
after all, have been passing through various hands for 80 years.
Click on any picture for an enlarged view or open the
picture in a new tab for increased magnification.
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