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.