Gemstone Vintage Jewellery

Taking a look at the Gemstones we find in Antique and Vintage Jewellery. Gemstones have always been popular in jewellery, the ancients collected and wore them – there is evidence of gemstone mining since the stone age.  I’m going to take a look at the gemstones we find in today’s antique and vintage jewellery that is jewellery we find from the Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian eras and through the 20th century till the 1970s.

Amethyst brooch

What is a Gemstone?

A Gemstone is something which can be set into jewellery, it  needs to look good, to last well when it is worn and it helps if the item is rare enough for everyone else not to have one.  Both natural minerals (eg. Diamonds, sapphires, amethyst) and organic materials ( Pearl, Amber, Shell) can be gemstones but  it is also possible to create gemstones in a lab. Gemstones can come in all shapes, sizes and colours. They can be cut polished and artificially enhanced to improve their beauty.

Gemstones in Vintage Jewellery

Different stones have been popular at different times. This is due to several factors, Fashion, availability of the stone due to new mine discoveries, changes to technology enabling the stones to be cut and polished in new ways.  Knowing  about when and how the different stones were used can help us date the piece of antique or vintage jewellery.

If we are looking at most antique  jewellery and vintage jewellery we see today the gemstones which are commonly found are: diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires and pearls. Amethysts, Aquamarines, Citrines, Topaz, Garnet, Coral, Jade, Amber, Turquoise, Opal, Peridot, Quartzes and Agates. Learning about this set of stones will help us to date and value any pieces of antique and vintage jewellery .

Citrine pendant

Identifying gemstones in jewellery

Because we want to protect our special jewellery we need to use none destructive ways of identifying the gemstones. The tools I use include a 10x loupe magnifying glass and an electronic gem tester. These can help but no necessarily positively identify the stone, you also need a bit of background knowledge. 

Use your eyes and the loup to look at and into the stone. One of the first things to do is to look at the colour, emeralds are green, rubies are red and turquoise is turquoise. If the stone you have is red you may just have a ruby or you might have red glass or a garnet. Take a look deep into the stone. Are their any tiny round air bubbles? If so you probably have a glass stone. Are the facets highly polished and hand cut? Then is is likely but not always a gemstone. Glass is usually warmer to the touch than gemstones but you need to learn the difference and know how warm a piece of glass is and how cold a gemstone is.

An electronic gemstone tester tests the heat restance of a stone and give strong pointers to which stone it is. Certainly you can tell the difference between a sapphire and blue glass, identify a diamond. Tell the difference between a citrine and topaz and make several other distinctions using this machine. To me the gem tester is invaluable but it is quite an expensive piece of equipment so unless you have lots of stones to identify it is probably not worth purchasing. If you just have a few items I would take the gemstone jewellery to my local jeweller to identify the stones.

I will discuss individual gemstones in more detail by giving each one a blog entry of its own.

Care of antique and vintage gemstone jewellery.

Most mineral based gemstones are stable enough to stand a wash in mild soap and water but some such as emeralds need to be treated with greater care. Organic gemstones such as pearls, amber and coral deteriorate more easily and you need to take much greater care of them , keep them separated from other jewellery and do not immerse in water.
As always the antique jewellery you see in the pictures here is currently available at www.antiquesavenue.co.uk