Featured I think this was a necklace.

I found this in the bottom of a very old sewing box. It has a bad case of the greenies. What kind of beads are these? Age? I've never seen anything like these so I am completely clueless. This is my new replacement camera so the lighting is slightly off. I'm still learning how to use it. Thank you. Mill

 

Glass and brass, from the look of it. They look like Czech or similar molded glass.

 

Thanks ev. Can it be cleaned up? Is it worth it?

 

The metal is shot; the coating is completely gone. I'd say don't bother; take the poor thing apart for its beads.

 

That's what I'll do.

 

Looks like glass.

Since you have nothing to loose.
Wonder what would happen if you soaked this in a small bowl of mineral oil for a day or two, and wiped it clean.

Won't hurt the glass if it doesn't work. I'd do it more out of curiosity than trying to save it. Then tear it apart for the beads.

 

I'll give a soak and will post some pictures so you can see the results.
How old do you think it is?

 

Dump it in a bowl of brown sauce or tomato ketchup. Works better than oil.

 

Hard to say. I don't really know.
Choker style so could be 40s? 50s? 60s?

 

Since you're going to try it,
Why not cut into two pieces, put one in mineral oil and one in ketchup (don't know what brown sauce is) Leave for the same length of time and then compare.

Should be an interesting test.

 

Ketchup is the winner. I took some beads off the chain. Vinegar helped but did not work as well as the ketchup. So far, absolutely no effect with mineral oil.

Is brown sauce like A-1 Steak Sauce or Worcestershire Sauce? If you don't have A-1 in the UK, it tastes like Branston Pickle.

 

I forgot to mention that I tested the chain. I thought it was odd that it didn't tarnish like the other parts on the beads. It has some gold content. I'm not sure if it is plated or gold filled. Definitely not solid gold.

 

that is amazing, they look great cleaned up.

 

Brown sauce is basically thick gloopy stuff. A bit more like A1 - absolutely not Worcestershire, that's quite another thing. Best known brown is HP sauce. It's the gloopy acidity that does it.

 

I just looked up HP brown sauce and one description said it doesn't taste like anything else but itself.

 

Oh thanks, now everytime I use HP with my meals.....I'll think of how well it cleans metal...!

 

lol komokwa

 

What I like best about your necklace are the brass fluted/petal bead caps (looks like you have about 72 of them). They have such delicate, well-defined fluting and deep cups. A lot of the newer bead caps are brass-plated, or are cheap-looking imports (like in the photo below). I've always soaked brass beads and bead caps in clear ammonia and buffed with a polishing cloth, but next time I'll try ketchup since it looks like it may do just as well, and isn't toxic (thank you Ownedbybear for the tip). ,

 

P.S. to my previous post. I noticed the necklace chain has a decorative impressed design on each link and looks like gold gilt over brass, which makes me think the necklace could be from the Art Nouveau or Art Deco era. If it was mine, I might try to restore the whole piece by cleaning all the brass, removing the two dangles toward the center that are each missing a bead and replacing them with dangles from the ends, then combine the two partial dangles into one and add that back, then attach a vintage brass clasp. On the other hand, that's a lot of time-consuming work for something that still might not command a very high price. It might be worth more selling the beads, chain, and findings separately. I wouldn't even throw out the brass jump rings and head pins. I don't like using new brass head pins and jump rings for restoring vintage jewelry because they're either too bright or have an antiqued finish that doesn't look authentic. I'd use a little wire cutter to snip off the eye of the old brass head pins to easily remove the beads and bead caps, then save the head pins since there's still enough left to reuse for other projects.

 

Just to confirm what evelyb30 said, here's a picture of similar molded faceted beads from Gablonz/Bohemia/Czech (late 19th/early 20th century). The book is "Baubles, Buttons and Beads, The Heritage of Bohemia" by Sibylle Jargstorf.