Jewelry - Fashion Jewelry - Fine Jewelry

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Jewelry has been used as decorations for the body for thousands of years. The earliest evidence of Jewelry wearing is from 3000 BC in Egypt. In this ancient world back then, gold was the preffered precious metal for producing jewelry. The reason gold was the most favorable precious metal is that it was very malleable - meaning it could be worked very easy. On top of being very malleable, it did not tarnish and was pretty rare and exotic. The Egyptions produced the following types of jewelry out of gold : bracelets, armlets, rings, head ornaments, pendants, earrings, necklaces, collars, diadems and head ornaments were all made with gold.

Ancient Egyption Jewelry - Golden Mask
	This is a picture of an ancient egyption golden mask, a piece of jewelry that was discovered in Tutankhamun's Tomb in 1922, The Excavations were led by a man known as Howard Carter. Golden jewelry artifacts like this are still found today in Egypt, Jewelry was truly abundant in Egypyt thousands of years ago.

Ancient Greek Jewelry - Golden Earrings
	This is a picture of Golden earrings that were made in Greece in around the year of 300 B.C. These golden earrings were attached to the ear via a thin gold chain that was hooped through the piercing. Today this piece of jewelry is priceless.

For as long as love and passion wad admist, jewelry has been though of as tokens of ones appreciation, and showed their love and affection for another person. While most pieces of jewelry have always been made using precious metals and Gems, even in the oldern times good quality fake jewelry was made that was intended to trick. The real authentic pearls and gems were brought western by the italians. The Italians traveled to europe with these gems and other goods used for making jewelry and sold them to eager merchants.

The most precious gemstone that was used in jewelry was a round, natural and flawless pearl, and they were prized as so. The finest pearls known to man were found in the Persian Gulf and South India, these pearls were used to make the most lovely jewelry pieces. Since these pearls were rare, and other gemstones were rare, people started producing fake, and some very convincable fake gems. These fake gems used for jewelry was mostly made out of glass by Italians. They could make these fake jewels used in jewelry very well and by the 1350's, fake jewel recipes were being passed around freely.

In the early 17th century jewelry started becoming more of an everyday thing. Women started wearing their earrings at all times of the day, even while sleeping. Fake pearl earrings were very common part of jewelry. The jewelry choice for evening-wear is fine diamond jewelry, and women would decorate the front part of their dress with diamond or other jewel encrusted pieces of jewelry as seen in the image to the right. Women would places these pieces of jewelry commonly known as dress ornaments in decreasing size from top to bottom on the front of their dresses, and would sometimes wear matching brooches in smaller petite sizes on their skirts or sleeves as well. You could see as many as 40 shuttles used to decorate one woman's dress.

As the years passed, jewelry became more and more acceptable in everyday leaving. In the early 1650's, pearls and other jewels started being attached to dresses. These pearls and precious gemstones made the jewels more luxurious, expensive and fashionable. Jewelry back then also had its standards, and to be truly fashionable while wearing pearls you had to wear them in abudance. In the mid of the 17th century, a young man from paris known by the name of Jaquin, actually developed and patented a way to manufacture fake pearls. He used his method and was the main producer of fake pearls for well over 200 years.

After the laste 1770's, the manufacturing of fake jewelry spread to cities such as Birmingham and London. New materials started being used in the manufacturing of jewelry, such as steel. The steel was used as a setting for jewels such as jasper or marcasite.

Jewelry started to die down in popularity for a few years, with no improvements and actually an opposite, withdrawel in use and production. In the year 1804 in france, Napoleon emerged as Emperor of the country, and he revived jewelry and fashion and evolved it a good deal as well. The head members that were connected to the French Imperial Family had their old gems re-set in the newest neo classical style. Parures were a very fine piece of jewelry commonly seen being worn by the most luxurious women. Parures are a suite of gems that are matching, and could include a comb, a necklace, a tiara, a pair of bracelets, rings, or other pieces of jewelry. In the picture to the right you see a magnificant jewelry parures set with dazzling rubys and emeralds. In this set you see a necklace, bracelet, ring and a matching set of earrings.

France influenced the jewelry and fashion world for many years. The next major influece was in the year 1837 when the well known Queen Victoria rose to power and took the thrown, and victorian jewelry -- which was nationalistic and romantic in general took flight. For many years in the past and some years to come, jewelry in the most part was made throughout Europe and shipped and sold elsewhere, but soon jewelry began to be manufactured in other countries such as Australia and America.

Although for centuries jewelry was being manufactured using a multiple of different methods, the mass production of victorian jewelry that took place truly meant a lowering of the standards. Some of the women were outraged when they saw the quality of some of the jewelry being sold, mass produced by machinery. Many women stopped wearing jewelry all together, or bought high quality jewelry from private craftsman that were freelance jewelry manufacturers -- normally one would pay a premium price for handcrafted high quality jewelry as well.

Mourning Jewelry was very popular for a few years, mounrning jewelry was jewelry worn to commemorate the death of a loved one. This mourning jewelry was usually in the shape of a brooch, ring or necklace. These were commonly worn during the Victorian era. To the right you see a picture of a piece of mourning jewelry, it is a pendant on a necklace. Inside this locket is a piece of braided hair, in the victorian days it would be of the loved one that the mourning jewewlry was meant for.


In the 1920's, costume jewelry started becoming popular. This costume jewelry, was usually mass-produced, it was good quality jewelry most commonly made out of glass. The most popular costume jewelry designer was Lalique. Fake or costume jewelry in this day was commonly called cocktail jewelry.

In the 1950's the american culture played a very dominant role in europe, some people refer to this as the hollywood influence. There was a large influece in the fashion world, mainly in the areas of manners, clothes and make-up from the movies and celebrities that acted in them. It was believed that somehow you would get famous if you had the look and acted like a celebrity. People wanted to wear look-a-like copies of the jewelry and clothing that were worn on the big screen by actors and actresses.

In the 1980's it moved from a big screen influece to more of a television influece. In the mid 1980's, there was a huge comeback for costume jewelry after the scenes from the day-time soap opera show "Dynasty and Dallas". This soap opera was watched around the world by over 250 million viewers. This jewelry was dead as quick as it came and by 1990 this jewelry trend was dead to even grandmothers. Now in the mid 2000's, good crafted fakes, are back in fashion

Now in the 21st century, costume jewelry is back in full swing. The best quality costume jewelry is plated atleast eight times in 18 or 22 carot gold. Cubic Zirconia - which are man-made diamonds, fake diamonds produced by man -- is often set in precious stones such as gold or silver. These items are of such a good standard that almost anyone can afford to have gorgeous jewelry these days. Who knows what is to come with jewelry, only time is to tell. Each time jewelry evolves it often comes suddenly and changes rapidly, we wont know until the next big change hits us.