 |
| From September 1953 Glamour - Coro Patrician |
Ok, I am going out on a limb here by calling this "Part One." You see, I found this great stash of vintage fashion magazines at the local flea almost a year ago and have promised to start posting the vintage jewelry ads from them for about as much time. Home tonight with the flu, however, I decided to give it a go. This will be part one, and hopefully, I should have parts two and three from what I already own, and, maybe get lucky at the flea market again this year to even post parts four and five in the future! Please excuse any "foggy head" typos as I muck my way through this with a fever...
 |
| From September 1953 Glamour - Accessocraft Fluted Beads |
 |
| From 1953 Glamour - Castlecliff Cachelettes |
I have posted all of these photos quite large so that you can click on them, then click again to zoom in for details. I'm sort of exhausted, so snapped photos instead of scanning which in hindsight I may do for future posts. If you need me to replace anything with a scan drop me a note and I will try and help you out once I am well again.
 |
| September 1958 Harper's Bazaar - Weiss Aurora Borealis |
 |
| September 1958 Harper's Bazaar - Trifari Cuffs |
 |
| September 1958 Harper's Bazaar - Richelieu Glitterlite |
These vintage ads are helpful to dating costume jewelry for collectors and sellers alike! Sometimes only one piece of a set like the one above from Richelieu was marked, so, you may find just the unmarked piece without a mate and have difficulty identifying it unless you find it in a print ad. Also, they are just useful to reference as the styles of the jewelry and treatments of one maker can often help you identify a trend or style to help date a piece from another maker. For instance, the brushed metallic surfaces shown by Trifari above were also commonly used by other costume jewelry makers in the late 1950's as well.
 |
| April 1960 Vogue - Weiss Big Pins |
 |
| April 1960 Vogue - Monet |
One of the best sets of print resources for dating costume jewelry I have found is the
Collecting Costume Jewelry 101, 202 and 303 series from Julia C. Carroll published through Collector Books. She has fabulous photos, details, reprinted advertisements and history of styles, manufacturers, trends and more. On-line, there are some great resources including this fantastic resource from
Illusion Jewels with regard to identifying marks. If you need to research a jewelry patent,
try this great site. If you are interested in collecting Delizza and Elster or Juliana Jewelry,
this site has all the resources you will need! (Warning, if you do not already collect D & E, a visit to this site might just inspire you to start!) I also link to these sites in the sidebar of my blog if you ever return and are looking for them again.
Enjoy! Make comments and suggestions and I will try and keep this going across several future posts...
