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ID bracelet gets a refit

I had a stunningly good day’s hunting in the local charity shops the other day. One of the items I bought was this silver bead thingy, set with a tiny opal. I wanted to create a piece of jewellery out of it and settled on making it into a bracelet.

None of the spare bits of silver chain I had were any good – they were either too flimsy, too short or simply the wrong kind of chain.

Then I remembered I had this silver ID bracelet:

One end of the central panel was starting to detach from the chain and the panel itself was (a) scratched and (b) had a faint, illegible engraving on it, so the bracelet was no good from a reselling point of view. I clipped out the panel and replaced it with my bead, using pairs of jump rings of 2.5 mm diameter and 0.8 mm thickness. It was an extremely fiddly job, but I’m quite pleased with the result:

It can be worn on its own or stacked with other thin bracelets/bangles. Not bad for £1!

Jewellery research – silver dogwood earrings and pendant

I found these lovely mid-century screwback earrings in a charity shop just before Christmas. They’re signed “STERLING” on the back, and there’s also a set of initials (“SB”) in an oval. A couple of minutes’ internet research later, I came up with a company name, namely Silverman Brothers. This company was started by Archibald and Charles Silverman in Providence, Rhode Island in 1897 and depending on where you look online, ceased trading in either the 1950s or 1960s.

There’s also a matching pendant, this time made by a different company – Lang Sterling, which also operated out of Providence. Their hallmark contains the word “STERLING”, where the letter “S” is in the shape of a swan.

Lang Sterling Vintage Jewellery

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_Silverman

https://www.costumejewelrycollectors.com/vintage-costume-jewelry-research/costume-jewelry-marks/researching-costume-jewelry-history-companies-and-signatures-10/

Green zebra jasper pendant … or should that be asbestos?

I’d had these two pendants for a while, having bought them in a charity shop for £1.50 each. The big one is unsigned but the smaller enhancer pendant (bottom pic) is stamped for sterling silver and has a maker’s mark – WK for Whitney Kelly.

I was a bit mystified as to the identity of the rather attractive green stone. I managed to find some pics online of something called green zebra jasper, which I learned consisted of green serpentine interspersed with layers of chrysotile. These stones I saw online looked identical to the stones on my pendants. Bingo, I thought. The word “chrysotile” did sound vaguely familiar but having found a name for the stone, I pressed ahead and listed one of them on Etsy with a title that started “Green zebra jasper pendant chrysotile”.

I was taken aback when Etsy took down my listing a day or so later, informing me that chrysotile was a banned substance. So I looked it up and lo and behold, it turns out that chrysotile is a type of asbestos that can cause asbestosis (inflammation and scarring of the lungs), as well as lung cancer.

I honestly don’t know if these pendants pose a real threat to human life or health, but I’m not going to list them anywhere else. However, Etsy does have a ton of listings for green zebra jasper gemstones and beads. Either these sellers know about the chrysotile connection and have omitted the keyword from their titles to avoid getting their listings taken down, or they’re just totally unaware. It’s an interesting one – I would love to know more about green zebra jasper and just how safe (or unsafe) it is.

Flat pressed flower charm with sterling back

I found this charm for 50 p in a charity shop the other day. It’s made from real pressed flowers under a clear resin dome, and the backing is stamped with “silver”. It’s really pretty but probably not worth listing in my Etsy shop, because whatever I could realistically charge for it would be eaten up by Etsy’s fees pretty soon – gone are the days when Etsy was way cheaper than eBay.

So what to do with this sweet little vintage charm? For now, I’ve stashed it away with a collection of flat charms that I have – mostly spinners, coins and town crests. At some stage I will “build” a charm bracelet out of them: a charm made entirely with two-dimensional charms.

Pink perfection – Lola Rose bracelet, Buch and Deichmann bangles, & N.E. From silver ring

I bought the Lola Rose bracelet first, several years ago. It was part of a bundle of Lola Rose stuff that I found in a local charity shop. Since then I’ve sold most of the other items on but I kept this rose quartz heart bracelet, because I love rose quartz. Then a few months back I came across two pink Buch and Deichmann bangles. B+D is a Danish company that now makes eyewear, but back in the ’70s and ’80s they sold a range of attractive jewellery and hair accessories. Designed by Ketty Dalsgaard, these were made of nylon in a range of gorgeous colours, and were lightweight and tactile. The colour of the bangles is the perfect match for the bracelet, and they all sit happily on the wrist without clanking or scratching each other.

To complete the pink ensemble shown in the pic, the silver and rose quartz ring is by another Danish designer, Niels Erik From. I bought this in another local charity shop for £1. Yes, £1. You don’t get bargains like that very often.

Coral necklace upcycling project

I haven’t posted in a while, due mainly to a lack of motivation and a lack of projects to post about! However, I have just finished what for me has been quite a big jewellery project, involving many nights watching Family Guy while passing nylon bead thread through many tiny coral beads.

The jumping off point for the project was this broken homemade necklace:

It’s not clear from the photo how this would have looked when worn (sadly one of the strands was broken otherwise I would have put it on and taken a picture), but it consisted of three different-length strands of coral beads, interspersed with some rather horrid imitation pearls where the pearl finish had worn off, leaving naked plastic behind.

I decided to restring the necklace – again, it would have three strands, but they’d be of equal length and the plastic pearls would no longer feature. I ended up with three strands, each just over 17 inches long. I found four big coral beads to join the strands together; luckily these had huge holes, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to fit three strands of nylon through them. Finally, I replaced the original gold-plated clasp with a sterling silver one.

This is the result:

As you can see for the last picture, I’ve extended the necklace using 1.2 mm thickness silver jump rings.

I’m pleased with the final result, although I think the necklace is crying out for an enhancer pendant set with turquoise/spiny oyster/pearl, along the lines of pieces by Carolyn Pollack/Relios. It would have to be a HUGE enhancer though. Maybe the charity shop fairy will be kind to me.

Andreas Daub silver brooch

I meant to post this a couple of months ago. It’s another addition to my gallery of Andreas Daub jewellery, and has been sitting in my VintagePointUK Etsy shop ever since. I think you’ll agree it has a Finnish look to it, reminiscent of pieces by Elis Kauppi. The main di5fference is that it’s rhodium plated, something you don’t often find on Scandinavian mid century jewellery.

Mawi ring. With charm. Very large, dangly charm.

This is something I bought a while ago for £10 in a charity shop, thinking I would sell it on eBay and make a fortune. Well, a decent profit anyway. Sadly, the good people of eBay weren’t interested so I was stuck with it. This is the item in question:

As you can see, it’s a rather lovely cutwork silver ring, featuring a bird sitting on what looks like a vine laden with luscious, ripe grapes. Dangling from the bottom is a charm with wood and semi-precious beads, and a silver token. There is also a metal tag with “Mawi” stamped on it. I happen to know that Mawi is a high end costume jewellery brand that’s been sold in places like Liberty (I don’t know if they still are though – haven’t visited Liberty in ages). But this marriage of ring and charm is incongruous somehow, not to mention rather impractical. What’s more, I couldn’t find another version of this combo when I did a Google search on Mawi stuff, which generally veers more towards the statement-necklace-with-studs end of the spectrum.

What did I end up doing? Well, I took the charm off, threaded it onto a plain narrow silver band ring and put it on my handbag. I wear the ring often, because it’s just my style.

Silver mask pendant converted from a brooch

Continuing the theme of jewellery conversions, I’ve just made this sterling silver mask pendant:

… out of a brooch that had once been part of an auction lot. The brooch was unwearable because the rollover clasp had lost its rollover part. This wouldn’t necessarily have been a problem, but the pin was also very loose in its moorings – hence the brooch would fall off almost as soon as you put it on. Below is a picture of the pendant from the back, when it was in fact a brooch:

I knew I had to remove the pin and somehow break off the clasp and mooring. I was able to clip them off using a pair of pliers, but this left a couple of jagged stumps which would have been uncomfortable (and unsafe) to wear next to the skin, and the file I normally use for silver testing wasn’t really up to the job. Imagine my joy when last week I found a metal file for 20p in a charity shop. This file (see bottom picture) did a great job of sanding down the stumps, although it did take about half an hour of continuous work to do it. Anyway, I’m sure the file will play a key role in future jewellery mini-projects like this one.

An earring to pendant conversion

A while back I found a round post earring in a charity shop. It was a single earring so therefore not the most easy thing to sell on. Also, I don’t wear earrings so if I wanted to actually wear this, I’d have to convert it to something else. So I hit on the idea of turning it into a pendant, like this:

All I had to do was gently bend the post at the back using a pair of chain nose pliers, to form a bale (see below for pic showing the back of the earring). The great thing about this particular pendant is its hidden bale, which means that the pendant doesn’t hang far below the level of the necklace/chain; you can therefore wear it with high-necked tops without worrying whether it’s going to disappear below your neckline. Winner.

This isn’t the only earring to pendant conversion I’ve done in this way – I will dig out the other one and put it on here some time.