Rhinestone Costume Jewelry

Diamonds are forever and Rhinestone costume jewelry is for everybody. If you are looking for information about Rhinestone Costume Jewelry, you have arrived at the best resource on the internet!

Would you like to learn how to care for Rhinestone jewelry? Click here for tips and techniques on caring for Rhinestone jewelry.

Costume jewelry grew from the desire for the everyday, ordinary person, to wear gemstone and precious metal jewelry just like the famous actresses and the royal families were wearing in their time.

In the history of rhinestones, their popularity in vintage costume jewelry, started in the 1920's and increased in the 1930s and 1940s.

Today, people refer to these "pretty pebbles" as Sea-Glass, and making Sea-Glass jewelry is gaining in popularity among wire jewelry artists.

The 1920s was known as the White Period because of the prevalence of clear rhinestones set in white metal. So, if you have a vintage brooch, set with clear rhinestones in white metal,(often pot metal) chances are it was made in the 1920s.

Gradually the white metal was accented by more dramatically colored rhinestones such as ruby, sapphire, emerald, black, amethyst and topaz.

Because vintage costume jewelry was inexpensive to produce it was produced on a massive scale. Rhinestone Costume jewelry became so popular, that it was sold in upscale stores as well as the five-and-dime stores. Colorless rhinestones were cut in the brilliant style to imitate diamonds in fake diamond rings and costume jewelry.

The wonderful thing about costume jewelry, that's truly unique to this style of jewelry, is in its outrageous extravagance of style!

Because of the low costs involved in production, jewelers could finally unleash and revel in their own creativity. Rhinestones after-all are a lot cheaper to buy than colored gemstones and diamonds! For facts about diamonds click here.

Jewelers and well-recognized designers who were used to working with gemstones could now fashion rhinestones and other materials such as molded glass and imitation pearls into rhinestone costume jewelry that the average person could now afford to wear.

In fact, the quality and design often rivaled their "real" fine jewelry and gemstone sisters and that is one of the reasons it is so popular and hunted high and low, by vintage costume jewelry collectors today!

Rhinestone Costume jewelry designs included flowers, figurals, bows, Art Deco designs, animals and geometric designs. Clothing became the background to foreground stunning vintage costume designs.

Vintage Jewelry and Rhinestone dress clips are synonymous! Dress clips were worn on just about everywhere in the 1930s-40s, but for some reason, they are almost totally overlooked today.

Traditionally, rhinestone dress clips were worn in the V of a neckline or the square of the neckline. They were often slipped over a cord or chain and worn as a necklace. Rhinestone dress clips were clipped onto pockets and placed on sleeves that had been rolled up.

Hats were also adorned with dress clips smooched in rhinestones. They could even be converted into a brooches, with ease and finesse. Simply by placing a safety pin inside a shirt or jacket so that the pin bar goes through the material then drop the clip over the bar and voila! A Rhinestone vintage costume brooch!

Reference:

Leshner, L., Warman's Vintage Jewelry, Krause Publications, 2008, Ioloa, WI.

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