Lisner Jewelry

Lisner Jewelry

Lisner

Until reccntlv, Lisner's clean, crisp, timeless style has been neglected by collectors on the lookout for bigger names. Now, the company's skilful designs in Lucite and rhinestones, coupled with their relatively low prices, are winning over collectors.

D. Lisner & Company was established in New York City in 1904. The company made its own fine-quality, unmarked jewelry and distributed pieces for others. In the 1920s, it sold well-made jewelry marked "Lanvin's Violet." Before the outbreak of World War II, Lisner became the US agent for Elsa Schiaparelli, importing and selling the designer's French-made pieces. Additionally, it had a license to produce her jewelry and accessories in the United States.

Lisner

After the "Lisner" mark was introduced in the 1930s, the company became better known in its own right. It used the many jewelry manufacturers based in Providence, Rhode Island, to produce its pieces, including Whiting & Davis, known for its metal-mesh purses.

Lisner had its heyday in the 1950s, with its colored plastic and Lucite jewelry targeted at the lower end and mid-point of the market.

Lisner Jewelry

 Developed by DuPont in 1937, Lucite was an acrylic plastic that could be colored and shaped or molded. Many costume jewelers adopted it, and Lisner used it extensively, with impressive results.


Lisncr's color combinations and attractive designs, popular in their day, arc again drawing attention. President of the company at the time was Victor Canz, a creative driving force with a feel for fashion




. He was keen to develop the clean, unfussy style that keeps Lisner pieces looking fresh today. Ganz told his daughter, Kate Ganz Belin, that he "tried to get away from the Mamie Eisenhower thing."

Working with Lucite or plastic, Lisner designed jewelry around geometric or abstract organic shapes, such as flowers.





 On higher-end pieces these crisply molded shapes were combined with clear or colored rhinestones, most frequently the much-loved "aurora borealis" rhinestone, or with exotic lava stones. Designs were set on silver-plated or chromed bases, or, in the 1960s, on black japanned metal.

Lisner

Mt'fahvork was also enameled to great effect. These pieces were populaf and are desirable tmluy.Lisner's pieces were not all of the highest quality but they reflected the design trends exemplified by high-end brands. The 1950s rhinestonc sets are an example of this: while not of the calibre of jewelry made by Weiss or Kramer, they are still better made than comparable modern pieces. Similarly, Lisner's "leaves" are not of Schiaparelli's standard, but they are attractive and affordable.

Lisner

In the late 1950s and into the 1960s, Lisner introduced a range marked "Richelieu," which was of better quality and more expensive. Pieces are scarcer today and, if in good condition, command relatively high prices.

Lisner

Prices for Lisner Jewelry designs were very low in the late 20th century, but as the price of work by more prized designers rises, so lower-division pieces such as I.isncr's become more in demand. Well-designed marked pieces are set to increase in value.

Lisner Jewelry

 The company used the "Lisner" mark in block capitals on its own pieces for the first time in 1935. In 1938, the "Lisner" mark in script was introduced.



 From 1959, "Lisner" in block capitals, with an elongated "L," was used. However, buyers should be aware that moulds and dies were reused later, so the mark is not always a reliable indicator of the date of a piece-

In 1978, the company became the Lisner-Richelieu Corporation. Production ended in 1979. 

Vintage Chanel Jewelry

 

Vintage Chanel Jewelry

Vintage Chanel Jewelry

 Coco Chanel was a pioneering designer: her concept of the "Total Look"     proposed that individual pieces of clothing were not as important as the way in which they were accessorized and worn.


 She was the first fashion designer, along with Elsa Schiaparelli, to make costume jewelry essential to her style ethos, and is sometimes even credited with coining the term "costume jewelry."

Vintage Chanel Jewelry

Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel wove an intricately romantic version of her early history, claiming to have been born in France's rural Auvergne region in 1893 when she was in fact born in the Loire Valley town of Saumur ten years earlier.


 She trained as a seamstress and went to Paris to become a cabaret singer when she was 18, styling herself "Coco."

Chanel was shrewd and charismatic. She took wealthy lovers and, as her cabaret carcer faltered, developed her dressmaking skills and found the capital she needed to open her first Parisian boutique in 1912. Here, she promoted a chic new look for women that had simplicity and comfort at its core, doing away with the restrictive corsets of her forebears.

Vintage Chanel Jewelry

Chanel's unfussy designs provided a perfect canvas for accessories and she began to produce jewelry decorated with inexpensive imitation stones and pearls so that her clients could afford to accessorize and personalize many outfits.



These pieces were styled to emphasize their "faux" quality and worn to flout the convention of women using jewelry to define their status. Clients followed Chanel's lead in piling on strings of faux baroque pearls to create a glamorous, excessive look which was revolutionary.

Vintage Chanel Jewelry

Vintage Chanel Jewelry

By the 1920s, the fashion house was expanding and Chanel's jewelry lines extended to charm bracelets and jeweled belts, ropes, and gold-and-bead chains.




 Drawing on classical influences, her pieces featured clear and colored rhinestones and synthetic stones combined with real gems.

Vintage Chanel Jewelry

 They were designed to enhance her simple outfits, typified by the legendary "little black dress" of 1926—Chanel said she wanted to rid women of their frills. "Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance," she told Harpers Bazaar magazine in 1923.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Chanel was one of the leading names in Paris and worked with some of the great jewelers of the time. Notably, she collaborated with Maison Cripoix, whose designs featured "poured glass" stones. Gripoix specialized in pdte-de-verre, pouring glass into delicate brass frames to create rich Moghul- or Renaissance-style pieces. Chanel also worked with the Duke of Verdura, who had previously designed fabrics for her.

Together, they produced some of the company's most desirable, classic pieces, including enameled and jeweled Maltese cross cuffs.

After her 15-year self-imposed exile in Switzerland during and after World War II, Chanel was ready to face the world again. Her Parisian comeback in 1954 saw her reinstated among the stars of haute couture, and she won back her admirers with the Chanel suit and pea jackets worn with bell bottoms.

Vintage Chanel Jewelry

In this new era, Chanel worked with gold- and silversmith Robert Goossens from 1955 onward, creating iconic designs such as Byzantine-style crosses on long chains of pearls and beads. Goossens was enchanted by artifacts from Parisian museums, drawing his influences from Maltese and Renaissance works, Byzantine mosaics, and stained-glass windows. He combined artificial gems with real stones collected on his travels. Rock crystal was his favorite material, lending delicacy to inexpensive pieces.

Vintage Chanel Jewelry

Most desirable to collectors are Maltese cross cuffs and pins by Verdura, floral-inspired necklace and earring sets by Maison Gripoix, and the rosary-style beaded pearl necklaces made by Goossens, which achieved iconic status in the 1960s.

Vintage Chanel Jewelry

Coco Chanel was still working when she died in 1971, at the age of 87. The company struggled under several creative directors until

1983, when Karl Lagcrfeld became chief designer and started deconstructing the House of Chanel to modernize it. In a 1989 article for the New Yorker, fashion writer Holly Brubach accused Lagerfeld of desecrating the Chanel ethos—as symbolized by his brash overuse of the entw ined "CC" logo—but his energetic reconstruction relaunched the brand.

Vintage Chanel Jewelry

 Under his leadership, the company produced costume jewelry echoing earlier designs, including long, gilt chains with pearls and glass beads, notably red and green, Coco's signature colors. Lagerfeld's first collection for Chanel was launched in 1983 and he maintains creative control of the house today. In 2005, Chanel acquired the company founded by Robert Goossens.

Vintage Chanel Jewelry

The 1980s saw branded luxury goods become the ultimate must- haves, and fakes abounded. Chanel's poured-glass pins from this time make good collecting as they were hard to fake, due to the difficult manufacturing process. Collectors also seek rare early Vintage Chanel Jewelry in the original box. The box increases the value by at least 30 per cent.

Fashion Costume Jewelry

Fashion Costume Jewelry

fashion costume jewelry

Flamboyant. Eccentric. Outrageous. Surreal. Elsa


Schiaparelli commands some of the most colorful adjectives to describe both her work and her personality. In her day, she shocked and delighted in equal measure. Today, Schiaparelli is a design icon.

Elsa Schiaparelli was born in 1890 to a wealthy family in Rome, Italy. 

Rebellious from an early age, she once attended a ball simply wrapped in a length of fabric that, of course, unwound, bringing shame and scandal to her family.

 Her marriage to Franco-Swiss theosophist William de Wendt did not last, leaving her a single mother to the couple's daughter, Gogo.

fashion costume jewelry

 Determined to succeed independently and with a passion for the arts and fashion, she moved to Paris in the 1920s, where top designer Paul Poiret introduced her to the world of couture.

 In 1927, she established her first maison couture, in the Rue de la Paix. In this highly charged world of artistry, she became friends with Surrealist Salvador Dalf, and became the archrival of Coco Chanel.

Schiaparelli shared with Chanel the belief in costume jewelry as an art form—not dependent for its value on the materials used—and also as an integral part of fashion design, but there the similarities ended.

 Her work was constantly compared to Chanel's elegant designs, but

Schiaparelli's early creations drew on whimsical themes.

fashion costume jewelry

 She took inspiration from African iconography, sailors' tattoos, Paganism, butterflies, and musical instruments; featured circus or astrological motifs; took natural forms and stylized them; or selected exotic and unusual floral or faunal forms, such as a pea-pod pendant, the "Eye" pin, or a clear plastic necklace printed with insects.

Schiaparelli also showed great talent in drawing out the skills of her collaborators, among whom Lyda Coppola, Jean Schlumberger, Jean Clement, and Roger Jean-Pierre stand out.

 A painter with a chemistry degree, Clement was taken on as a designer by Schiaparelli in 1927. He was skilled at working in plastics, and married his own innate good taste with Schiaparelli's outrageous concepts to create sophisticated objects, many of which are museum pieces today.

fashion costume jewelry

Schiaparelli channeled the philosophies of Dadaism and Surrealism into her work, as evinced in her "Shocking Pink" collection of 1936, including her "Shocking" perfume and cosmetics. "I gave to a pink the nerve of a red," read her company's manifesto.

Fashion Costume Jewelry

 The concept she developed centered on the Surrealist metaphor of splashing the "black cocktail dress" of society with vivid and outrageous color.

Her jewelry used of bright, exotic stones in vibrant pink. From this point onward, shocking pink—"unreal pink"—became her signature color.

 Schiaparelli's approach won over many critics, as well as receiving acclaim from her Surrealist circle, including Dalf and Jean Cocteau, who designed jewelry for her, and from fashion illustrator Christian Berard. It also revealed her continuing quest for presenting an alternative to contemporary fashion.

After fleeing to New York City during World War II, Schiaparelli returned to Paris in 1945, but found it changed.

fashion costume jewelry

 In 1949, she established a ready-to-wear outlet in New York and licensed DeRosa to make her jewelry, labeled "Designed in Paris—Created in America." She returned to the United States in 1954, closing her Parisian fashion house and leaving behind her assistants, Pierre Cardin and Hubert de Givenchy.

In 1950s New York, Schiaparelli turned her attention fully to costume jewelry, creating abstract, floral, or faunal designs using unusual and highly colourful iridescent "fantasy" paste stones and glass, in incredibly fake oranges and pinks, studded with rhinestones. Charm bracelets were all the rage at the time, thanks to Grace Kelly, and Schiaparelli made some of the best.

Klsa Schiaparelli's costume jewelry line ceased production in the late 1950s, and she died in 1973.

Examples of Schiaparelli's Parisian work from the 1930s arc rare: many are museum-quality pieces, fetching record sums.

fashion costume jewelry

 Pieces from the 1940s and 1950s arc most commonly found today. Collectors seek designs with frosted glass leaves, jagged "ice" glass, or strangely coloured pearls set as grapes. Heavy enamel pins featuring her surreal motifs, such as bagpipes or clowns, are also sought after.

Most French Schiaparelli work is unsigned, although a few pieces are marked with "Schiaparelli" in block letters on a rectangular plate.

 Most of her later French work and all American pieces are signed "Schiaparelli" in script. 

Fashion Costume Jewelry

This mark was in use from 1927, and patented in the US in 1933. Schiaparelli fakes abound, and the collector should also consider whether pieces are 1980s reproductions when valuing.

FINE JEWELRY

Fine Jewelry

Fine Jewelry

Coro covered all the bases: as both innovator and imitator, the company was attuned to the market and produced a vast range of quality jewelry that addressed every fashion and every pocket, from dime-store pieces to top-end treasures.

Coro was established in 1900 as Cohn & Rosenberger, a boutique selling outsourced designer jewelry. The company reached its zenith in the 1930s, after opening a factory in Providence, Rhode Island, to manufacture its products. It eventually employed around 3,500 staff.

Fine Jewelry

The Coro brand was synonymous with well-made lower- and mid- priced pieces reflecting the latest fashions. By the mid-1930s, Coro had retail stores in many US cities, and factories in Britain and Canada as well as the United States: its diversity and volume of output made it the world's largest costume jewelry manufactory.

Fine Jewelry

Fine Jewelry

The company also had a range of upmarket brands, Corocraft being the best known. Corocraft products were high quality and featured expensive materials, such as sterling silver and crystal rhinestones from Europe.

 The Vendome line, introduced in 1944, was its most exclusive label and was so successful the brand became a subsidiary of the firm in 1953. Coro's sets for Vendome arc in great demand. Pegasus was another Coro brand, but it is not as collectable as the "Duettes" or Vendome pieces.

Fine Jewelry

 Top-end Coro Pegasus rhincstone pieces compare with the very best from other companies.Coro's sales team, led by Royal Marcher, took the products across the I'nited States, opened a factory in England in 1933, and contributed hugely towards the company's success. 

However, the success of Coro & Corocraft cannot be attributed solely to the company's market presence. It was also due to the talent of its designers: "Franyois," Robert Geissman, Oscar Placco, Massa Raimond, Gene Verecchio, and Albert Weiss.

Fine Jewelry

In 1924, the highly creative Adolph Katz joined as design director. I lis design style was delightfully whimsical, and his talent made a huge contribution to the company's success.

 He was responsible for the delicate en tremblant floral pins, featuring elements that "tremble" and move, and his "Jelly Bellies" and other animal pins arc avidly collected.

Fine Jewelry

 From the 1930s to the 1950s, "Jelly Belly" pins were all the rage: they featured a stone—often colored-glass cabochons or Lucite—in the center to represent the animal's belly.



Fine Jewelry

 Lucite, a plastic, was developed by DuPont in 1937 and proved an effective substitute for a range of rock crystals, such as chalcedony and moonstone. Lucite was quickly adopted by many costume jewelers, and Coro mainly used it in its translucent white form for "Jelly Belly" pins.

Fine Jewelry

The skills of jeweler's son Gene Y'crecchio ("Verri"), who joined the firm in the 1930s, swiftly took him to the position of chief designer, which he held for 33 years. 1 lis key pieces include the "Camellia Duette," the "Owl Duette," the "Twin Birds Duette," and the "Flower Duettes."