Vintage Costume Jewelry Designers

Vintage JewelryLearning about Vintage Costume Jewelry Designers is the first step in building a vintage jewelry collection. I absolutely adore vintage jewelry, but out of all of the vintage items that I love and collect it has been the most frustrating! Most vintage items are part of collections that are very well catalogued and defined and finite. This is not true with jewelry. I decided to start this website in my quest to learn more about it. I thought I would share what I know and am learning.

There is vintage costume jewelry, vintage fine jewelry, vintage rhinestone jewelry, the choices are endless – but if you are like me, unless it is just too cheap to pass up, you want to know what you are getting. One of the benefits of collecting vintage items is that they have and generally hold their value, provided you paid a fair price to acquire it.

Vintage JewelryWhen collecting vintage jewelry, the term vintage is generally accepted as a piece that is over 20 years old, antique is over 50 years old and estate is a previously owned item that is less than 20 years old.  However, all of these terms are used interchangeably by many.

Vintage Jewelry Designers & Companies

Here are the most well known Vintage Jewely designers. I am working on getting a page up on each designer. The ones that do have links will take you a page with more information.

Schiaparelli Jewelry

Schiaparelli Jewelry

Schiaparelli jewelry represents the life work of a woman with true vision – Elsa Schiaparelli. Her story begins in Italy in the late 1800s. She moved to Paris in 1920 to open a fashion house. That operation continued until 1940 when she moved to New York City and opened a shop that offered perfume, clothing [...]

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Dorothy Bauer Jewelry

Dorothy Bauer Jewelry

While Dorothy Bauer Jewelry is much newer than most of the jewelry on this site, it is so collectible and exquisite that I just had to include it! This is a line that is sure to continue to increase in value over the years, so it makes a great collectible – one you can enjoy [...]

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Bergere Jewelry

Bergere Jewelry

Bergere Jewelry was created in 1947 in New York by L. Erbert and Pohls Incorporated. The company created high end costume jewelry that is still popular today. The company stopped production of the merchandise created in 1979. During the period that they were in business, however, there were many pieces put out for sale to [...]

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Ballou Jewelry

Ballou Vintage Costume Jewelry

Ballou Jewelry was created in 1946 in Lincoln, Rhode Island and still make quality jewelry for the public that is sold all over the world. This company was founded by Barton Ballou and is still owned by the family. The family is now in its fifth generation of ownership and creating the same high quality [...]

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Barclay Jewelry

Barclay Vintage Jewelry

Barclay Jewelry was created in 1911 in Providence, Rhode Island. Upon its inception it was called the New England Glasswork Company. However, the management of the company transformed — the brothers Robert and Alvin Rice in 1938. When this happened the name was changed to Rice-Weiner Company. Under their care, the company flourished for many [...]

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Kramer Jewelry

Kramer Vintage Jewelry

Kramer Jewelry was created in New York in 1943 by Louis Kramer. After a short time Louis was joined by his brothers Morris and Harry. Together the three brothers created beautiful costume jewelry in a variety of styles and designs for all types of clients. The pieces that were created by this company are highly [...]

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Accessocraft Jewelry

Accessocraft Jewelry

Accessocraft Jewelry was founded in the early 1935 and was in business until 1998. In addition to costume jewelry they also made accessories, including magnifying glass necklaces, opera glasses and decorative accents for belts, shoes and handbags. They produced tens of thousands of war relief pins in World War 2. Later they became known for [...]

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Hattie Carnegie Jewelry, Hattie Carnegie Brooch

Hattie Carnegie Jewelry, Hattie Carnegie Brooch

The story of Hattie Carnegie Jewelry begins with Henrietta Kanengeiser, also known as Hattie Carnegie, who was an important name in both fashion and vintage jewelry. Born in Vienna in 1889, Henrietta worked at Macy’s at the age of 16 making hats, which is how she received the nickname Hattie. She continued trimming hats for [...]

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Boucher Jewelry

Vintage Boucher Jewelry

Boucher Jewelry is one of the names in collectible vintage costume jewelry. It began with Marcel Boucher who grew up in France but came to the US in his early 20s. Here he began working for Cartier in New York. When the depression hit and Cartier had to lay off workers, Boucher kept his skills [...]

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Beatrix Vintage Jewelry

Vintage Beatrix  Jewelry

Nat Sugarman founded Beatrix Vintage Jewelry in 1946, the company was named after his sister. In 1965 he sold it to the firm’s manager Leonard Mandell. This is when Beatrix jewelry really began to soar thanks to a very clever idea. Mandell wanted focus heavily on holiday jewelry. The idea was to “say it” with [...]

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