Antique jewellery

Antique jewellery is all jewellery made more than one hundred years ago. The amount of jewellery worldwide which survives from earlier than the nineteenth century is relatively small, due to age and frequent remodelling prior to the great diamond and gold discoveries of the mid nineteenth century. Antique jewellery prior to the twentieth century was generally set in silver or yellow gold or silver topped gold. Diamonds were old cuts, occasionally tablet cuts, more commonly square, rose, old mine, or old European cuts. Coloured gems also were cut with high crowns and deep pavilions. Old mine cut diamonds the result of new cutting techniques were highly sought after in the 18th and 19th centuries as now. The high crowns and wide facets caught the light from any angle enhancing the brilliance and fire. These were all cuts with a soft mellowness, individuality and a very different appearance and charm to modern cuts.

From the early nineteenth century jewellery encompassed a variety of styles we can now choose from at whim - the elegant simplicity of the Georgian era , the exuberance of the early, middle and late Victorian periods, the sinuousness of Art Nouveau, the individualism of Arts and Crafts and the delicacy of Edwardian and Belle Epoque.