Tag Archives: garnets

Bohemian garnet bonanza… with bonus upcycled pendant



I’ve recently started going to my local auction house to find stuff to sell in my shop. So far, I’ve been encouraged by what I have found. One box of mixed jewellery, won several months ago, came up with a couple of silver items, plus some interesting costume bits and pieces along with these:

bohemiangarnetbits2

…and viewed from the back:

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One of the pieces was obviously a brooch, with a missing catch and several missing stones. The smaller “clusters” looked to be part of a necklace. There was also a pair of matching earrings not shown in the above pics. More about these in a moment.

I pondered what these luscious blood red stones could possibly be. Clearly the settings were good quality and when intact, the brooch, necklace and earrings would have cost quite a bit of money. There is no hallmark anywhere on the metal but it looks like silver, with a gold wash that has more or less worn off. I put all the pieces in a little plastic bag, placed the bag in my “IDK what on earth do do with this” stash, and forgot about it.

Until one day a couple of weeks ago I was on eBay having a browse, as you do. In an attempt to copy Pinterest, eBay likes to present you with a gallery of items vaguely related to your previous searches, in the hope you’ll be tempted to bid. I normally ignore these items but on this occasion, my eye was caught by a listing for a “Bohemian garnet brooch”. The stones and setting looked exactly like the pieces I’d found at the auction. Further internet searching revealed that yes, Bohemian garnets are real garnets and they come from Bohemia in the Czech Republic, where they’ve been mined for centuries. (More info here: http://www.granat.cz/en/bohemian-garnet.) Further searching led to the discovery that vintage jewellery made with Bohemian garnets commands a fairly decent price. So I was able to sell the earrings for about twice what I paid for the original box of costume jewellery.

I also made this, for myself:

bohemiangarnetnecklace2

Though I say it myself, I think it looks pretty good! I’m now left with the brooch and seven necklace “clusters”. I think I will sell the brooch “for spares or repair”, but I’ll keep the clusters in case I’m inspired to do any more upcycling.

Garnet choker (a tale of two necklaces part 2)

I’ve done something with the two necklaces I described in this post. All the garnets have been pooled together, along with a handful of garnet beads I had left over from an earlier project, to create this choker:

garnetbeadnecklace

The resulting necklace was about 16 inches long (i.e. too short for me) so I extended it a bit with some silver chain. The great thing about this necklace, apart from the lovely texture and colour of the garnets, is that it’s an ideal partner for pendants with a very large bale. The pendant stays put without slipping, and looks better (IMO) than it would on a thin chain.

Here’s me wearing the necklace:

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A tale of two necklaces – garnets and pearls

I bought these two necklaces (below) from different charity shops, within about a week of each other. Total cost: less than £4. Necklace no. 1 has a goldtone toggle fastening, some nice looking real pearls and faceted garnets (at least, they look like garnets. Definitely not plastic or glass). Necklace no. 2 has some decidedly uninteresting metal beads, plus a silvertone fastening. And more garnets. I’m thinking that I might cannibalise the two necklaces and create one single necklace just out of garnets. The pearls would make a nice stretch bracelet for stacking with other bracelets. The metal hardware can be given back to the charity shop.

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And here’s a close-up:

2garnetnecklaces