After vacillating over crap photos of this ring on an auction site a year ago I decided not to battle hipsters into three figures and had resolved, rather bitterly, to let it go, telling myself I didn't really like it anyway.  On coming back from a walk the Lovely R announced he'd won it for me, smiling fit to burst.  But do we ever want anything less than just after we've convinced ourselves that some other d-bag's going to outbid us for it?  So I was sort of mad at him for spending the money and rolled my eyes and stomped away.  The thing turned up about 24 hours later and I was forced to admit he'd picked a winner.  It's well-marked and I think we did look up the maker, but I forget who it was now. 

As a rule, we prefer costume and vintage jewellery to most 'precious' modern junk.  Why?  Oh I don't know... little things like design, flavour, quality, integrity, individuality... basically everything missing from modern production.  And vintage pieces from iconic design houses like Dior are the best of the best.  They took the postwar austerity lemon and made spectacular lemonade with these in-your-face Jackie-O sets, intended for on-trend debutantes, fashion slaves and upscale lunching ladies, reinterpreting current and historical influences to produce jewellery that must have looked even more startling then than it does now.

Henkel and Grosse were taken over by Dior 2006.  One Hundred Years of Passion for Grosse and Bijoux Christian Dior: Henkel & Grosse Jewellery (2010, Vivienne Becker) details that outfit's production and collaborations.

As with so many things, by the time they became perfectly acceptable to the general herd, both the inspiration and production methods behind them had begun a slide toward obsolescence in the face of sloppy incoming hippiedom and the demise of taste in general.  Luckily, a thing of beauty lasts forever, or something like that.  If only in principle, because these delicious demi-parures have largely disappeared into private and institutional collections and a quick poke around the internet will give you an idea of just how scarce they've become on the open market.  We sold another amethyst glass set a couple of years back through a boutique in the States and it was snapped up almost immediately.  

The picture above is flashed to give you an idea of the play of colour in this incredible collar.  While the largest crystal elements are a pure azure blue, the smaller ones exhibit a lustre that flashes in shades of rose gold, violet and subtle pheasant-olive and bronze.  The complex, detailed metal structure is gold-toned and secured with a garland-style bead loop to the rear of the piece.  The earrings are clip-on and are a perfect match.  Condition-wise, I would rate this piece as near to mint as is possible for a vintage item to be; there are no bead losses or chipping, no corrosion or gold-tone scaling.  The box is in excellent condition, with slight foxing and storage scuffs being the only indication of age.

In the pic below right you might be able to see the faint matte banding in the butt-end section of the second largest bead, demonstrating where it was machined.  New beads don't have this tell-tale, buffed-then-worn texture.  Nor do they have the unfakable compliment of nicks, dings, scratches and scuffs that tell of genuine usage.  The colours tend to be too bright and clean, possibly because the murky, almost sinister oxblood red you see here is partly the product of chemical change in the ageing material.  And because they're rarely hand-finished, Chinese resin tends to be too-perfectly symmetrical as per modern mass production techniques and often carries moulding seams that haven't been buffed back.  Valuable and genuinely old strings are sometimes polished to a smoother finish by well-meaning traders, but this eliminates often-beautiful patina and causes confusion, so it's not a practise I support personally.  

Most early plastics have their own distinctive smell when rubbed and warmed between your hands (except lucite- that's plexiglas/acrylic which doesn't have a pronounced odour) so unless you're seriously olfactorily declined, there's no need to stick hot pins in the stuff or carry around testing chemicals etc.  Bakelite/catalin smells of formaldehyde when warmed thusly; like a dentist's clinic or old paint solvents- vaguely sinister, sickly and old.  (Don't let this put you off.  It only arises with vigorous rubbing and not in the course of normal wear.)  You shouldn't have to try too hard to raise it, though; if you're not getting the smell in less than say, ten seconds of rubbing and warming, be suspicious.

Anything aerosol is highly likely to be antagonistic to your precious plastic (and amber); I make putting on my jewellery the last step in the lengthy process of achieving maximum beauté, and never wear perfume on my neck.  Abusing bakelite with solvents and sunlight will eventually result in chemical decomposition.  You'll see surface crazing first, and if you catch that quickly you might be able to have it polished off, but once the internal cracks set in, it's dunzo, unfortunately.  It's important to quarantine all 'sick' bakelite and celluloid so the fumes they release as they break down don't go on to make neighbouring pieces unstable... apparently.  I've never observed this process but I've seen a few fried beads in my time; they're ugly, manky suckers, to be sure, and I wouldn't dream of exposing them to my healthier lovelies.  You're not supposed to store vintage plastics in a container made from modern plastics either, though this sounds a bit apocryphal to moi.

One of the most pleasing physical aspects of bakelite in my opinion is the distinctive sound the beads make as they clack against one another.  They have a voice all their own and say kunk instead of the pissy little kink of lesser materials impacting each other.  Bakelite is the bear of the vintage plastic kingdom.  I wear it with pride.