Puzzling Evidence: Helen Burton, Miriam Haskell, and Chinese Beads in 1930s-40s Fashion Jewelry

Recently I obtained a rather sad old 1930s necklace featuring Chinese beads. It had evidently Seen Life stuffed into boxes, drawers and thrift shops and had some problems.

Old cinnabar lacquer beads from the 1930s have an unfortunate composition that melts under warmth, frequently with a result as in this necklace – blobby distorted beads, bits of cinnabar melted and glued onto other beads.

So, the beads required some cleaning and repair.  Hot water to soften the cinnabar and get it unstuck from other beads, vinegar to remove spots of verdigris, re-shaping the crushed filigree beads back to round, and making a new beaded bead to replace the fragile old bead strung on fine silk over a rag core. *

A similar triple strand necklace from Beads With A Past is featured in a blog post I did several years ago about this type of necklace.  The stone beads typically include carnelian, chalcedony, amethyst, rose quartz, rock crystal, lapis (or dyed jasper), turquoise, jade, and possibly steatite and serpentine.

https://www.beadiste.com/2015/07/puzzling-evidence-deco-chinese-charm.html

The Beads With A Past necklace appears to be strung on cord with bead tips used to attach the strands to the clasp.  Whether this is the original stringing or a professional restringing is unknown.  On my necklace, the replacement stringing materials of monofilament and flex wire beading lines were likely chosen as they can be used without needles.  The mis-drilled holes on many of the stone beads possibly also encouraged the use of stiff monofilament and beading wire instead of trying to coax fabric cords through tiny holes with fragile beading needles.  Unfortunately, the amateur re-stringers did not know how to fasten monofilament and flex wire cable to the clasp ends, so the clasp attachments were a loose mess of clumsy knots. One half of the clasp was also accidentally attached upside down.  I used a doubled 10-pound test Fireline polyethylene braid, size 12 beading needle, and French wire (bullion) to cover the line at the clasp attachment, as the French wire seemed to coordinate best with the twisted wire work on the clasp.  Also because I really hate crimp beads and bead tips.

In the Beads With A Past necklace, small corrugated brass beads can be seen between the larger beads.  These small beads are important in a necklace that is not knotted, as they provide pivot points for flexibility and reducing snapping strain on the cord.  Many of these little beads were missing on my necklace, possibly having rolled off to the usual unfindable crevices when the strands broke, so I decided to not re-use the ones that were left, substituting similar 3mm sized Czech glass beads in a swirled amber “cornelian” glass.  Brass beads are verdigris bait, so using glass eliminates that danger as well.  As the original composition featured carved cinnabar beads, I substituted two 1970s cinnabar beads of superior manufacture with a sturdier lacquer, albeit smaller size.

Was amused that both I and the older designer of the Beads With A Past necklace came to the same obvious conclusion about positioning the large round cloisonne bead and the woven silver bead – I didn’t notice this until after I pulled the photos from my archive.

Necklace designers will likely observe my composition is less symmetrically structured than the Beads With A Past necklace.  For example, the large cloisonne ovals could have been positioned a bit lower and across from one another, and the cinnabar on opposite sides instead of on the same side.  Were I even more obsessive I’d restring the two strands, but instead my response is “Too damn bad.”  Let us pretend that these offenses against symmetry add drama and encourage the eye to move around the design.

Not all the beads are Chinese.  The filigree beads are of Western manufacture. Similar filigrees can be seen on pages 35-37 in the Guyot Brothers of Rhode Island filigree catalog online.  https://www.salvadoretool.com/pages/cfGuyotCatalog.cfm

The tooled brass clasp reminded me of the brass work on a series of belts and necklaces featuring Chinese cloisonne beads.  Helen Burton? Miriam Haskell? Chinese brass work, or Rhode Island?  Chinese workshops were quite expert and skilled at tooled, stamped, and engraved brass bric-a-brac, so I lean toward Chinese origin & Helen Burton as supplier to the West.

Of interest are the facts that in 1937 Helen Burton visited Rhode Island, then a costume jewelry manufacturing mecca, to sell a shipment of her Chinese merchandise. 

https://www.beadiste.com/2014/02/puzzling-evidence-chinese-cloisonne.html

Miriam Haskell also used Guyot Brothers filigrees in her designs.  I continue to wonder if there was some connection between Helen Burton and the appearance of Chinese cloisonne, cinnabar, and other beads in this 1930s-40s charm jewelry, and particularly an effect upon the Miriam Haskell workshop. These “Chinese” designs have never appeared in any of the costume jewelry books or online forums I’ve consulted.  There is only a passing reference on page 29 of Deanna Farneti Cera’s book, “The Jewels of Miriam Haskell:”

“Political events also influenced designers. Out of sympathy for Chinese and Greek people who were fighting Japan and Italy, the allies of Nazi Germany, they turned to those antique cultures for inspiration.” 

I suspect interest in “Chinese” fashion jewelry began in the late 1930s, when Japan was invading Manchuria, and then China itself in 1937, starting WWII in Asia. The exploits of Claire Chennault and his Flying Tigers, Generals Joseph Stillwell and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, Mao and his Red Army, and the infamous Japanese “Rape of Nanking” were in the news.  Nonetheless, no example of this style of costume jewelry with Asian elements attributed to Haskell is illustrated in the Cera book, or anywhere else, it seems.  Cera provides only one photo of a pair of earrings, ironically containing no Chinese components at all, with a caption reading,

“Earrings in the shape of Chinese lanterns Frank Hess, c1941. Filigree and gilded metal stampings, rhinestones, rondelles and pate de verre beads.  Unsigned.  Private collection. In these earrings the colours of the American flag (red, white and blue) and the Chinese lantern design both represent messages of encouragement and solidarity (at this time China was fighting against Japan).”

*For those curious about how the beaded bead was made, I did a sketch of the pattern derived from examination of the old bead.  This cross weaving technique shows up often in Chinese beads woven from tiny coral beads.

Chinese Cloisonne Beads in Western Fashion Jewelry 1930s-40s: Large Flat Oval Beads - A Miriam Haskell/Frank Hess Connection?

This interesting necklace sold recently at auction, and the vendor kindly granted permission to use their photos in a blog post here.  In the past ten years since I started this blog to investigate Chinese cloisonne beads, I’ve only encountered two other instances of this design featuring large flat oval beads, frilly filigree petal caps, and fabric cord - one featuring dragon beads and turquoise-colored stone nuggets, the other a center fragment that had lost its fabric ties (Collector’s Weekly, 2017).  A suite of 10 beads similar to those in the necklace fragment appeared on eBay in 2014, but close comparison revealed that they are different from the necklace fragment beads.

Collector's Weekly 2017

eBay auction set of 12 beads 2014

The Chinese workshop that produced these flat oval beads seems to have favored only a few designs: a dragon, plum blossom buds, and chrysanthemums.  These designs are worked either with the enamel background fully filled in or left unfilled with the golden brassy background exposed in the “golden ground” technique (also called openwork).  

These large flat oval beads also appear in other jewelry designs: another fabric composition featuring metal-covered silk cords; rather barbaric heavy brass torque-style necklaces and bracelet; a very simple design that simply hangs three pendants from a heavy brass chain; and elaborate jewelry featuring gemstones and filigree findings. 

Pay attention to the filigree petal stampings and the brass drops – we’ll be seeing a lot more of them in upcoming posts regarding “Chinese”-themed jewelry attributed to the Miriam Haskell/Frank Hess atelier prior to World War II.

A timeline for events in these decades:

A Chinese Cloisonne Necklace from 1979 with a Morning Glory Clasp

Way back in 2013, when I was trying to sift evidence for dating Chinese cloisonne beads, I wrote a blog post about what I subsequently learned was a morning glory motif in a champleve clasp.

The Morning Glory Clasp

A recent eBay purchase turned out to be a rare example of a cloisonne necklace of 15mm beads that could most probably be dated right down to the month and year of purchase.  

The seller kindly made the effort to go through her mother’s travel diaries, and discovered this in connection with the necklace:

“My mom flew from California to Hong Kong on September 12, 1979. Several days later she and her friend joined a tour group and they boarded a train to Canton. During her stay in Canton they also visited Foshan. While in Canton my mother mentions buying some ‘lovely cloisonné bracelets.’

Next the group boarded a train to Shanghai and lastly they flew to Beijing. My mother spent 2 weeks in China.”

Here is a fascinating online account of another adventurous woman’s trip to China in the late 1970s:

Retracing My Grandmother's Journey Through 1970s China

How much did the necklace cost back in 1979?  Another morning glory clasp necklace of smaller 12mm beads, still unused in its original box, was purchased in the early 1980s by a man backpacking in China.  If the price tag is indeed in dollars, $52 in 1983 would be the equivalent of $150 today.

Our 1979 piece is a pretty necklace that has been well cared for and still has its original polish.  And it displays an insight into the working method and skill set of the craftsperson who made the beads as well as the origin of the design.

Initially the collectivized Beijing Enamel Factory was staffed by older masters and craftsmen still surviving from the war-torn 1930s and 40s.  These men had spent decades learning their cloisonne skills – Jin Shiquan, for example, was apprenticed at age 11.  They could draw, from scratch with thin copper wires and tweezers, designs that most of us would have great difficulty copying in pen and ink.  A traditional pattern is the plum blossom branch, featured in the necklace under discussion here.  It can be seen in these early 1930s photos taken by Hedda Morisson of a Chinese cloisonne workshop.

Hedda Morrison and the "Old Man" Chinese Cloisonne Workshop

What I find interesting is the method of wiring the design in the 1979 beads.  It features the traditional motif of a blossom branch, depicted vertically as if stemming from the hole of the bead and then dividing into two twigs.  A few clouds are added alongside to form a background design that prevents the enamel from clumping up.  Then, instead of rolling the bead horizontally to add another branch on the opposite side, the bead is flipped vertically and the original design sequence repeated.  One can see this from the reversed direction of the clouds in the background. One side of the bead is thus “upside down” to the other.

This design of two blossom branches shows up in other morning glory clasp necklaces:

Different coloring, beige background enamel

Reverse coloring with light blossoms and dark background enamel

By way of contrast, a necklace of oval beads reported as imported in 1981 by the eBay seller, Joannie’s House of Treasures, shows a blossom branch design of a single branch that starts near the hole and then wraps horizontally around the bead as a sort of belt.

1981 on the left, 1979 on the right

  

1979 beads vs 1981 oval beads

By the time the oval 1981 beads were decorated, a newer style of working flowers was spreading among the wireworkers, wherein the center circle and petals were worked in one continuous strand of wire.  Initially the centers of the flowers were tidy circles, as in the past.  However – presumably as unskilled workers had to be hired during the cloisonne export boom of the 1980s and 90s -- flower centers often became more and more irregular and sloppy blobs.

The beads in the 1979 necklace are evidently the work of an older craftsman – or at least someone working under his supervision – as the flower centers are constructed as separated tiny circles and half-circles, as can be seen in cloisonne works from the 1930s and before.  The smaller 13mm beads shown in the blog post about the “Old Man” workshop demonstrate a similar pattern of the split blossom branch, albeit with more intricately and finely worked branches, buds in the older fashion of a circle + two half circles, no leaves, and tiny spiral floral centers instead of simple circles. Each bead in the circa 1930s necklace was rotated horizontally to create a long branch across the “front” and a small branch on the “back,” with no filler of small clouds.  I wonder if this demonstrates the origin of the pattern used in our 1979 necklace?

1979 beads top, circa 1930s "Old Man Workshop" beads below

My blog post previous to this one contains a link to a PDF discussing how cloisonne beads were manufactured circa the 1970s and the evolution of the blossom branch design.  It includes an example of a necklace like our 1979 piece --  15mm beads strung with metal links and a morning glory clasp -- demonstrating an older worker’s conception and mastery of the blossom branch design, this time as a belt around the bead, similar to the 1981 oval beads necklace albeit more finely worked.

Beijing Enamel Factory and Chinese Cloisonne Beads

Compare this older wiring sequence with the 1979 and 1981 beads.