Puzzling Evidence: A Distinctive Chain & Clasp in "Chinese Charm" Western Fashion Jewelry c1930s-40s

A rope chain with a small box clasp is a distinctive marker in this particular cluster of circa World War II “Chinese Charm” jewelry.  Some necklaces are quite simple in conception, others are elaborate confections. Notable is the lack of any glass or plastics – all Asian components are gemstones, lacquer, bone, cloisonne, cinnabar lacquer, and exotic seeds.

Lore has it that these were made by the Miriam Haskell workshop.  Apart from the distinctive rope chain with the small box clasp, the metal findings are combined in a very unusual way, indicating they were of special interest to the designer.  Miriam Haskell is known to have been fastidious about findings. Charms feature a variety of creatively used metal accents, with a characteristic use of tiny washers and what look like tiny gears interlaced between larger components.  Also distinctive is a peculiar sandwich constructed of a brass washer between two chrysanthemum/daisy petal bead caps.  I suspect the two petal caps were first tried as a pair, as they sometimes appear that way; but then the designer noticed that the two pieces had a tendency to slip out of alignment, so the brass washer was added to make any misalignment unnoticeable. Brass drops also make an appearance.  In other words, these charms were assembled in a more complicated manner than the typical headpin or eyepin strung with a bead cap, bead, bead cap, and then looped.

These same metal findings also appear in other charm jewelry with non-Asian components, such as the necklace with casein and phenolic beads illustrated in the slides below.  Apart from their general 1920s-30s filigree and deco design styles, these metal pieces seem likely to be pre WWII products of Rhode Island factories, as after the U.S entered the war in December 1941, costume jewelry factories were banned from using “strategic metals” considered essential for the military effort, such as the copper and tin used for brass being diverted to ammunition production. Whichever workshop was using them to produce these Asian charm necklaces evidently had the purchasing power to ensure a good supply of them – other distinctive design lines featuring them will be discussed in forthcoming blog posts. 

A grateful tip ‘o the hat to those who granted permission to use their photos in the slides below.  These are uncommon pieces of jewelry, each individually composed, unlike the hundreds of cast and stamped costume jewelry pieces from large factories.

Temporary Link:  Those interested in acquiring one of these necklaces can visit MalenasVintageBoutique on eBay https://www.ebay.com/itm/386505456891 

Click on photos below to enlarge, or open in a new tab to magnify even further.

Puzzling Evidence: Chinese Filigree Chain Jewelry & Western Fashion Jewelry c1930s-50s.

 A jewelry style that was possibly produced in Peking (now Beijing of course) in the late 1930s for Helen Burton’s “Camel Bell” shops in the Peking Hotel and the Empress of Britain luxury liner features a distinctive style of Chinese chain with filigree links and stone, cloisonne, cinnabar lacquer, enameled filigree and cast brass dangles.  Tourist jewelry featuring Chinese filigree was evidently popular in the 1920s-30s, and examples are not uncommon.  However, in the jewelry described here, the selection of beads repeats over and over, and thus seems likely to have been assembled in the same workshop in the same time period.  As well as the same assortment of beads, the jewelry often features a 1) a distinctive large, handcrafted fold over clasp of twisted filigree, stamped “CHINA” on the back; 2) cinnabar lacquer beads disintegrated by heat.

What interests me in these necklaces and bracelets is that they seem to have caught the attention of East Coast fashion jewelry designers and set the pattern for what was subsequently stereotyped as “Chinese lantern” or “Chinese charm” jewelry.  Helen Burton was well connected, so this wouldn’t be surprising.  This would not have been cheap jewelry. The Peking Hotel, where her boutique shop was located, was the luxury destination of its time.  A fascinating recent article by Paul French describes Wallace Simpson’s visit there:

https://www.thatsmags.com/tianjin/post/38282/3-things-wallis-simpson-didn-t-do-in-china 

Burton also visited Rhode Island in 1937 to sell a shipment of her merchandise, and possibly shop for jewelry findings to use in her jewelry creations as well.  Two distinctly Rhode Island filigree beads appear in designs featuring the assortment of beads in the chain link jewelry, but whether these were pieces produced by either Helen herself or her Chinese suppliers, or were re-workings by a Western designer, is unknown. Possibly both. Helen spent the end of 1937 and 1943 enduring the Japanese occupation of China confined to Peking and the Wei Hsien prison camp, so it seems unlikely that what appeared for sale in Western shops during the WW2 years were her un-retouched creations.  Lore attributes these works to Miriam Haskell, but…the evidence is puzzling.

The slides below demonstrate how the original jewelry components were adapted and recombined into Western fashion jewelry, sometimes merely with a change of clasp, other times with extensive re-working.  Click on any image to enlarge it, or open in a new tab to for further magnification. 

 

Puzzling Evidence: Splashy Millefleur Chinese Cloisonne Beads in 1930s-40s Fashion Jewelry

 Back ten years ago when I became interested in the dating sequence for Chinese cloisonne beads, I started collecting photos of larger items to compare designs and enamels.

The necklace I recently reconstructed [https://www.beadiste.com/2024/12/puzzling-evidence-helen-burton-miriam.html]  has cloisonne beads in comparatively good shape - only a couple of scuffs - that show an identical composition to a style of millefleur bric-a-brac that seems to cluster around the 1930s.  One particular canister is an example that shows an identical splashy style as in the necklace beads.  I'd be awfully surprised to learn that the beads and canister did not come from the same Beijing workshop.

The red CHINA stamp on the canister is typical of Republic items from c1920-40s, so dating these cloisonne beads to the late 1930s seems reasonable.

(Click on photos below to enlarge them, or for more magnification open each in another tab.)