When I pick up a vintage piece of jewelry, maybe a brooch, I almost immediately turn it inside out. Several times the seller has commented “It is not gold or silver”.
For me this is annoying since that’s not what I’m looking for.
Gold and silver don’t particularly interest me and most of the time I can tell fine jewelry at a glance before handling it.
So what am I looking for?
First, I’m looking to make sure the clasp or jewelry back is intact and not broken or damaged.
So I’m looking to see if there’s a signature. With familiarity with various signed vintage jewelry pieces, I can now tell who the company or manufacturer is at first glance on many pieces, without picking it up and looking at the back. So when you have a few minutes to spare, take a trip through vintage jewelry websites and look at the photographs and companies.
If there is no signature, the construction of the jewelry and the findings used can provide valuable dating clues. But more on that in a later article.
Let’s go back to the signature. Looking at the wording can give valuable clues about the dates.
First, the name: Exquisite produced jewelry from 1914 through the late 1970s, but their signature didn’t appear until after 1953 (confirmed information from an employer who made the jewelry’s molds). more accurately from 1956, but still to be confirmed.
Look up the company to see when they were in production, it will give you a period of time to work. Most of the information is now available on the internet and you may be lucky to find when the jewelry was actually patented.
The copyright symbol: the c in a circle means it was made after 1955. This was because Trifari won a lawsuit that year, and they all did the same to copyright their designs instead of patenting them.
How the signature is presented: in writing, abbreviated, capital letters, large capital for the first letter of the name and then lower case. This can also help to date. Again, there are many websites and Yahoo groups that can help. Exquisite, Miracle and Kenneth Lane are just a few that changed their signature and this may date them to when that type of signature was in use.
Pending and design numbers are also clues. Pending pat dates older than 1955. Again, many sites have patent listings. Boucher and Sphinx are two companies that used numbers for their designs. With or without the signature of the name.
So just looking at a signature on a cartridge gold plate can give you plenty of opportunities to date your vintage jewelry.
