Featured What are these two necklaces made of?

Hello experts! Hope everyone's day is going well. I am stumped on the material used for these bead necklaces and would appreciate your knowledge, opinions and direction.

The first is extremely lightweight so not bakelite. Could it be celluloid? The clasp is odd (to me anyway) as it is a box type clasp but the tongue goes into the opposing bead. Is that indication of its age?

The second one is heavy for its size (14"), has a barrel clasp and feels like glass. Beads are irregular. Could it it be made from conch shell?

As always, your help is much appreciated.

 

The bottom one looks like a conch bead necklace that @Bronwen id’d for me. Can we see a close up?
Any lines within the beads on the top one? I’ve got some celluloid that has gone that slightly yellow colour but I definitely don’t come under the expert category. Cool clasp.

 

Upon very close inspection, the rose beads seem to have seam or mold line around each bead. Also they are hand knotted. Though not so sure that makes a difference in an id.

Here's a closer shot of the other necklace:

 

These are described as celluloid and look to have a seam mark? No idea if the seller is correct though.

 

In the linked photo above this post I can see that the clasp is marked "Coro". I wonder if the seller missed that?

I agree that "celluloid rose beads" are likely what Lizzie's first necklace is.

 

I’m not sure about the top ones, conch is a bit pinker I think. There’s another type of shell that I’m trying to think of that’s a bit browner…hmm….

 

Thanks Lucille and KSW. Celluloid it is. Thanks for confirming. I'm pretty sure the beads are molded, not carved. Both mine and in the listing above. The design is much too uniform to have been carved. Also I think mine have the original clasp whereas the listed one may have been altered to add the Coro clasp.

 

The beads of the second necklace look like helmet shell to me, just using a liberal amount of the white layer.

 

Same - the heavier necklace is shell.

 

Thanks for the lead Bronwen. I did a search on helmet shell and didn't find a match. But then I came across this:

Conch Shell Rounded Tube 3-6mm - Lima Beads

These are the same as the beads in the necklace I have.

 

They are like your beads, but IMO they are misidentified as conch when they are really helmet shell.

See middle of article:

https://cameotimes.com/index.php/reference/materials-guide?start=1

 

Thanks for the information Bronwen. Just to be clear, I didn't mean to give the impression that I was questioning your expertise in the shell identification. I was just sharing what turned up when I searched shell beads.

There is so much misinformation in cyber space that sometimes the confusion is overwhelming. I always try to list my items for sale correctly and it is a conundrum when the majority of the same items are incorrectly identified so people searching to buy use the incorrect terms as well. Like jelly belly jewelry (which originally did not include any color except clear) or carved celluloid (when in fact, it was molded).

I so appreciate the knowledge of the members of this forum.

 

This. I always feel guilty if I list an item using a search term that I know isn’t strictly correct but you need it for the buyer to find your item. I try to be very clear in the item description though to avoid any confusion.

 

Same here, KSW.

 

Two words: rainbow moonstone. (argggh!) White labradorite is too cumpersome and hard to spell, apparently.

 

Oh, it's quite all right, I didn't think for a moment that you were. You were quite correct that the beads you found for sale appear to be the same type of shell as yours. It's the seller's expertise that is at issue, & even they may just be repeating what was provided by their source.

The web site page I gave you the link for is probably some of the best work I have done in the name of getting accurate info out there by trying to illustrate how to make the distinction between coral & conch shell &, in passing, between conch shell & helmet shell beads.

I have more than once had this conversation with dealers at a very high end antique jewellery show who have some lovely pink cameo labeled & priced as coral. They can be quite defensive about it, but, now that everyone has the Internet in the palm of their hand, I direct them to that article & you can just see the light dawn.

When I first began to look seriously at cameos, I kept coming across ones on eBay that were the Three Graces described as three Muses. I would write the seller & many made the change, enough so that the correct info took hold; you rarely see the erroneous description these days. I eventually discovered that the incorrect description is in print in a US collectors guide.

 

I haven't been selling for a while, but have done the same thing: used an incorrect term along with correct ones in a title; started off the description with a clarification.

 

Yesterday I came across a YouTube video where the person attempted to teach her small audience the differences using your entire materials page filmed and read out loud (with no credit... Which would help her audience!). Even before she brought the page up, the way she was describing things, I knew it was your site she found.

 

That's actually nice to know, since my intention with the web site is to get accurate information out there. A YouTube video may get more views than a page you actually have to read for yourself.

I did once, quite some time ago, see some of the text from one of my articles cut & pasted by an auction house to describe the subject of a cameo they were hawking.

The best/worst was finding that someone had found, on this site, my joking comment that the cameo cutter we, again on this site, had finally identified as Charles Schmoll must have been giving away a cameo with every purchase from his family's shop, they're that numerous on eBay alone, & incorporated it as fact into her own post on one of the social media platforms, where she acts as if she had discovered Schmoll.

Thus is renown.

 

The Schmoll joke absolutely kills me because I don't understand how they could have read that whole thread and come to that conclusion!

I did think you'd like to know someone was enjoying the site and even to see how she directly interacted with it. I can send it later. I didn't think that her use of the information was bad, because that's what it's there for, I just wish she'd directed her viewers to the source so they could learn more. She wasn't claiming the info as her own and made it clear it was a website. I don't think it was malicious, just an oversight. Glad to know you're not bothered.