Featured Finds Thread

Thank you, Hollyblue. I just cleaned them, and they test into the spinel range now.

 

So to speak.

Ask @Any Jewelry about mala beads.

 

And some ya gotta wonder.

Those green ones look like what often gets called Pacific or West Coast Jade. They may be the real jade, but it looks like the kind used by the Maya or the Maori - they look pretty much the same to my less than educated eyes. There's another stone used to mimic it. The Siberian jade is different again.

There's a Ziemer Company in Switzerland that makes synthetic diamonds. I wonder if that's any relation .... maybe just the country?
http://www.3design.com/synthetic-diamonds-traceability-challenge/

 

They might be lab created spinel - just went looking and found some lab stones that are dead on. They probably wouldn't use a stone that high color and clarity in silver earrings unless it were synthetic.

 

Thankyou. Are there any Jade experts I could tag to ask?. I am considering buying a gem tester as most of my questions seem to be what's this or what's that!. I'm slightly at a loss as to what I should buy that's good enough but not going to break the bank. Or I may just end up confusing myself further!

 

The green stones are jade. Could be European jade.

The weird nut things are mala beads, as Bronwen said. More specifically Rudraksha beads, used for Vedic, Hindu and Buddhist mala or prayer bead strings.
Rudraksha means the tears of Rudra, a Vedic (pre-Hindu) deity. In Hinduism Rudra morphed with Shiva, so Rudraksha beads are used a lot by followers of Shiva, Saivites.
The number of segments varies between 1 and 21, although one with 27 has been found. The number is significant to believers.
Here is more info on the symbolism:
https://www.aumrudraksha.com/blogs/...draksha-the-different-mukhi-and-their-meaning

Most rudrakshas grow in Indonesia, inside beautiful blue berries:

 

Give me the clip earrings and no one gets hurt.

I suspect 1960s ish Spanish or maybe Italian.

 

Nice find for 23 euros, antique jewellery from Germany. Gold and goldplated.
The plated brooches have some wear. The brooch top centre is gold, but has some solder on one side. I'll see if I can fix that. The one at the bottom has a tiny seed pearl.
They were all filthy, and I am in the process of cleaning them.



I bought the lot for the pendant, which is gold with Bohemian garnets and rock crystal. The back is gold plated silver, and the stones are mounted in silver:


This style with the garnet rosettes is typical of Schwäbisch Gmünd, a gold and silver manufacturing town in southern Germany. The style was mostly worn with the costume of Munich, Bavaria, ca 1840-1880.
I love it.

 

That makes me happy .
It is very beautiful and a wonderful bargain by the sound of it.

 

Thankyou for that info. Are they datable by what you see?
Those blue berries are stunning!

 

Pleasure. I think the costume joolies are better at dating the necklace, since the Rudrakshas are combined with costume findings. @evelyb30 maybe?

Aren't they? If only they made those into beads.

 

My guess would be 1980s, from what I can see. The other big beads are slices of tagua nut dyed red. The spring ring and tongue closure are late 70s and up. So... 70s and later for sure with smart money on the 80s. Just don't ask me where it came from.

 

Thankyou

 

Totally random bead necklace- Take some pretty pink ( not as red as in pic)and gold speckled beads, add some bigger ones, then some odd shaped pearl covered glass ( pearl was falling off so I washed the rest off). Then add 4 glass AB pink beads and for the heck of it add 4 red and black stripes glass beads!- what were they thinking I wonder? All rather lovely beads but possibly not together!. 50/60s do you think?

 

I love the garnet piece, too!

 

I went to a new estate sale today, everything was really priced very high. They only showed a few pieces of jewelry, but evidently they had more than they showed. I got there late, 45 minutes into it. Houses are pretty much picked clean by then here. Anyway, I got this set for $4. I am trying to figure out if it is D & E- back is reinforced (needs a cleaning). What do you think?



Then these were a dollar each from my consignment guy. This Florenza has seen better days, but it was a DOLLAH.

And this was a dollar.... do you think it is D & E? I am terrible identifying this stuff.

 

Same here. The first one is obvious; the second one took a little longer.

I'd be thinking late 50s too; the AB finish on some beads dates it to post-1954 at least.

 

Beautiful jewelry, everybody -- as usual!

 

Today's finds. Brooch is hallmarked for 1891 Birmingham. Coral necklace needs to be restrung (it was a bag of loose beads that I then strung on some thread to keep track of and added the clasp), but it was only 3 euros (any idea what kind of coral it is? Or how old it might be?). I got the blue beaded necklace for free, thought it was just junk, but after some Googling, I think it's Persian blue faience donkey beads. The blue spacer beads look old too.