White Zircon Earrings

Zircon is a magnificent and underrated natural gemstone that has been worn and adored for centuries. The rainbow of colors and the stone’s double refraction of light makes antique and vintage zircon jewelry and watches especially versatile and attractive for wearers all over the world.

Imagine if you could capture the sky, encircle it with diamonds and hold it in your hand. The magic of blue zircon rings is like that, a piece of sky slipped onto your finger. It isn’t just its sumptuous cerulean blue, with a depth that seems to stretch into forever; or the fact that blue zircon changes color with the sun, growing lighter until it is placed again in darkness; or even that zircon in its many colors is itself nearly as old as the earth, if not the heavens, dating back 4.4 billion years on a planet that is 4.5 billion years old.

Rather, the real splendor of zircon jewelry — zircon rings, necklaces, earrings and other accessories — is its scintillation, its extraordinary sparkle, what Reshma Kothari of Diagem Imports, or DGI, calls its “brilliance and impressive fire, with flames of color that give off a lot of sparkle and shine — more so than other colored stones.” Indeed, notes jeweler Paolo Costagli, “because of its sparkly appearance, zircon lends itself to be worn as a single accessory. If you have a nice large zircon cocktail ring, you don’t need anything else.”

While blue zircons are the most frequently sought after, zircons stand out from most other gems in that, like diamonds, they can be found in several colors, from oranges and yellows to greens to pinks and reds. All except white zircons are lightly heat treated to create or enhance their colors, though nearly all are naturally pleochroic.

Keep in mind that for all its versatility and allure, zircon is not a stone best worn every day. The gem registers 7.5 on the Mohs hardness scale, which means that while harder than many other gemstones, it can chip more easily than rubies, sapphires and diamonds.

Find a collection of antique and vintage zircon jewelry and watches on 1stDibs.

In the United States, ear piercing didn’t really become popular until the 1950s and ‘60s, but our desire for a dazzling pair of vintage earrings has deeper roots than that. In fact, wearing earrings actually goes back thousands of years, and you can find many tangible connections between now and then in how we continue to talk about these treasured accessories.

Women wore ornamental earrings — studs and hoops at the very least — in Ancient Egypt, which is home to mines that are among the earliest sources of emeralds in the world. Emerald earrings are highly prized today, and their quality lies in their rich, saturated color. The highest-quality emeralds are green or bluish-green. Earrings worn by the affluent in early Roman civilizations were set with precious stones such as diamonds and pearls, and a clean-looking pop of pearl on the front of the lobe is as timeless as ever. Hoop earrings are imbued with symbolism and cultural significance for many, and on view in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Ancient Near Eastern Art Gallery is a pair of simple gold hoops from Mesopotamia dating to between 2600 and 2500 B.C.

Today, ear piercing is very popular all over the world, and, as a result, it is difficult to overstate how much everyone pines for a good pair of earrings — modernist drop earrings, glamorous Victorian hoops, geometrically complex chandelier earrings, you name it. Sure, jewelry trends and the fashion darlings of social media come and go, but earrings have a staying power that seems impenetrable: The still-strong love affair between British royals and Cartier earrings is more than a century old, glossy 1970s hoops from legacy houses such as Bulgari and Van Cleef Arpels remain the statement makers they’ve always been and although people have been stacking earrings for many moons, the allure of an expertly mismatched stack of charms and studs still feels fresh and new.

While there is no shortage of modern earring designs to choose from, the classics, like coral earrings, Art Deco–style earrings and diamond drop earrings are still heavy hitters. On 1stDibs, find a wide range of antique, new and vintage earrings today.