Featured Date on this costume pendant brooch?

Picked it up for $8. Faux pearls, open-backed glass stones, claw set. The teardrop stones glow under a black light. No markings. The clasp is a closed c-clasp. What would you date this piece? Would the design suggest Czech? I love the colors, it will be my suffragette necklace. TIA!

 

Has the bail been added at a later date do you think?. Has the clasp got a roll over?.
Please can we have more photos from different angles?
Sorry for all the questions!
Very pretty

 

I don't think somebody would put so much work into a costume piece by adding a bale and new clasp. The bale moves back and forth. I am seeing elements of the Edwardian time period here, maybe around 1910. Could be a suffragette piece.

 

Sorry, but I don't see any size listed? Is it in the United States, UK, or elsewhere?

If I were to guess it's around two and a half to three inches in diameter as these pendants usually were.

Workmanship appears to be American, higher end costume jewelry. I doubt it being a suffragette piece even if some of the colors may be tuned to their signature ones. Suffragette jewelry was contemporary with that movement in the early part of the 20th century.

This looks to me to be made later, like late 1930s to early 1940s, of Providence, Rhode Island, or Massachusetts production.

The mounting is most likely stamped brass with a goldplating that now has worn thin in places. The claw prongs and open-back stones are marks of higher end production as are the ball-end safety clasp and soldered bail.

These unsigned pieces were often commissioned by better specialty stores and better made than the average c.j. at the time. They were unsigned specifically so they they couldn't be comparison-shopped in dept stores jewelry depts where the more common signed c.j. was sold.

"Unsigned" does not always mean "less quality" in the U.S., it's often the opposite. The finer stores would attach their own labels, such as Neiman-Marcus, Saks 5th Ave, Bonwit Teller, B. Altman, and many others.

 

Could be Czech, could be German with that back. The clasp and hinge are 1930s ish.

 

Thanks guys. It is about the size of an older silver dollar. I just love it, good to know it's origins.

 

@Marko Could you remind me and members in other countries of the size of an older US silver dollar? I've never been lucky enough to see one long enough to remember what size it was.

 

https://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_circumference_of_a_silver_dollar

 

@Marko Diameter of your brooch/pendant is then about 1.5", thank you. Rather on the small side for that many stones in it but not unusual for PPP, i e Pure Providence Production, of stamped, goldplated c.j.

The origins of brass stampings and how made are outlined here, scroll down to part starting with:
Salvadore Tool and Findings, Providence, Rhode Island
Some hidden links no longer lead to images. I found one image, stampings [click on it there] showing a sampling at the entrance seen when we toured the factory in 1997.
More om modern Providence, RI, jewelry:
Inside Providence, Rhode Island, Part I of III:
The Parts That Make Up The Whole
Links to Guyot stampings are non-functioning so the two images representing them are attached here.

 

None of those resemble the original pendant in manufacture, design, style or any other characteristic.

It's far more typical of German and Czech pieces.

 

@Ownedbybear The images are not meant to represent look-a-likes to Marko's brooch/pendant, only to show that the majority of brass stampings originated in RI and MA.
Some facts to keep in mind here: After WW I ended Czechoslovakia, Germany were pretty much decimated in infrastructure. Widows and their children starved.

The Allies with US in the lead poured support into these countries. Not always straight monies only, the aid came in the form of product. From RI, MA, brass stampings, raw without plating were supplied to stock industries where the widows (and children too, laws were different then) could work setting the glass stones (of which there was plenty left since before the war) in c.j.

Plating was expensive, however, so the gold or silver plating on the Czech and German production was as a rule much thinner than it would have been in the U.S. So thin sometimes that the back of the pieces hardly saw any plating. The pieces so finished in Czechoslovakia, Germany, were then brought back into the U.S. to sell at retail. Very cheaply actually, since it was more or less an effort to support the wartorn nations and the supplies had already been paid for by U.S. taxpayer funds.

More archived images: Salvatore stampings interior, woman at machine, stampings on wall presentations.

 

No aid was provided after WW1, so I presume you mean WW2. Germany was forced to pay huge reparations to the Allied Nations after WW1, which precipitated the rise of Hitler.

That lesson having been learnt, the aftermath of the second world war was treated rather differently.

In any event, this wasn't made after WW2.

And the Soviet satellite country which was Czechoslovakia after WW2 most certainly didn't get components shipped from the USA. Nor did the DDR.

 

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@Ownedbybear Not to mix up the wars and reparations here, but I did not mean WW II in this example even if similar programs were in effect then too, see later in this post.

After World War ONE, massive aids to shore up the infrastructure in the new country Czechoslovakia and also Germany came from the Allies.

One part was to ship goods in the raw to manufacture finished products for sale in the Allied countries.

The U.S. c.j. industry was called upon to assist. Tons of findings, components, including brass stampings, went to these countries c.j. assembly industries to help widows and children have jobs to survive.

A similar program was also in place for WEST GERMANY and FRANCE after World War TWO.

Part of the socalled "war reparations", i e, to repay loans owed Allies was sending finished manufactured products back to the U.S. and other Allies.

F ex Denmark sent cheese, hams, Poland and Germany sent pork, mustard, jams, jellies, noodles, other food products, all as repayment to the Allies for ending the war.

And, yes, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, and Sudetenland supplied finished jewelry product embellished with the strass, rhinestones they were known for, and of which they had huge supplies even after WW II.

The Allies never bombed the Svarowski factories, btw, even when they made product for the Nazis they were obviously forced to do while Austria was occupied.

That industry was deemed too valuable to blow to bits and the Allied command had a hands-off policy on them. This was told to me personally by one American veteran costume jewelry manufacturer who flew in missions over those areas in WW II. His name is Don Hobé, of Hobé Jewelry, now retired. He was a lecturer at one of the jewelry conventions in RI, seen here with one of the Convention participants:

 

It is lovely, Marko. The suffragette colours could be a coincidence though.

Yes, it would. The design, and every part is Czech made, the metal Gürtler work, the glass cabs, and the faux pearls. The Gürtler of Bohemia never lost their skills, and no foreign aid was ever needed for their craft. The detail is beautiful.

Gürtler were originally Bohemian craftspeople who made decorative buckles and similar items. Entire families worked at home. They were only allowed to work with non-precious metals.
When the Bohemian costume jewellery industry grew in the 19th century, the Gürtler were the people who provided stamped metal elements for the new designs, and they were often the people who assembled the pieces.
Their craftwork looks nothing like the blanks on the Providence photos, it is far more intricate.

As for US involvement, the US, after first refusing any contact with Masaryk, did come to accept the new Czechoslovakian republic and did give financial aid. Especially finances for food, but also for large industries, like the cotton industry. They also helped set up economic ties between the new countries that used to be part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Since the Gürtler were craftspeople who never worked on an industrial basis, they were of no interest to the US. Being proud craftspeople they would never have accepted imported blanks anyway. They made everything themselves, just like they had done for generations.
It is conceivable that they received food aid, just like their neighbours probably did.

Gürtler families still work in their own homes or small workshops.