Art Deco Brass and Glass Bead Choker

A lovely chrysoprase and rock quartz crystal necklace from the Art Deco (ca1920s) era! Crafted in 9k yellow gold, this chain is interspersed by ten chrysoprase and rock quartz crysta...

A gorgeous turquoise necklace from the Art Deco (ca1920s) era! Crafted in 14k yellow gold, this piece is comprised of 9 oval-shaped turquoise links. Each link features a bezel-set tu...

Magnificent French Art Deco Paste and Givree Glass Bead Sautoir composed of hundreds of paste "buttons" wired to form looped links. Hand blown, h...

This antique rare hand-pressed-glass necklace features semi-translucent grape-green large beads that are capped with gilt-brass filigree. Based on the combination of bead seams, spring-ring clasp, and metal findings on the unmarked faux Chinese-jade necklace, it dates to the late Victorian period most likely from Western Europe. Around WWI, hand presses, which stamped molten glass into a mold to create a bead with a hole and a seam, were often used to produce costume jewelry as a cottage industry in Germany and the Czech region. This was while there was a lack of factory machine presses and finishing tumblers that used sand to polish out the seam lines. Another reason that the cloudy green beads can be identified as atypically hand-pressed is that they are more opaque and therefore harder and less prone to breaking during formation than fully-translucent glass, which was better suited for automated-machine pressing. Also the green beads are an unusual swirled color including white, which suggests that their production was more limited than machine-pressing would enable. Without the bead-seams, this necklace could be mistaken for one by Coco Chanel. Her 1920s couture...