More 18th Century Jewelry Examples

My previous post on 18th Century Jewelry has been very popular, so I thought I would follow it up with a post filled with pictorial examples of what was worn at this time. All of these were pulled from Wikimedia Commons. In the pictures I was able to find below, I noticed that there are two types of neckwear. A simple ribbon or pearls.

Pearls

I was able to find three examples of women wearing pearls. In my last post about jewelry I stated that Mrs. Adams’ pearls actually were not real, so it’s likely that these pictured below were not either.

1776
The woman below has a rather large neckpiece that goes from her neck down to the top of her dress. The necklace also has a cameo type thing, and two matching pearl bracelets with similar cameos. Also interesting to note in this painting is this woman’s earrings. They seem to also be made of pearls and are rather large.

1780-1800
The woman below has a more simple set of pearls on. You can see that her necklace is tied in the back with a ribbon. Similar to the painting above, she also has a matching set of pearl bracelets. It’s important to note as well that the pearls here and above are rather large and round. These are not delicate pearl necklaces.

1777
Here is one last example of pearls. This is a drawing, so it’s a little harder to see them, but you can tell she has one strand around her neck. They do not seem to be as perfectly round as the two depicted above either.

Ribbon

These pictures below show a more simple neck ornament of ribbon. The pictures I have here show a simple black, thin ribbon, between 1/8 inch and 1/2 inch. I have also seen a few pictures where the ribbon was thicker, maybe almost an inch and a half to two inches, and it was also black.

1771-1772
The woman below is wearing a thin black ribbon in the style we would call a ‘drop’ necklace. The ribbon goes around her neck and then drops down to the top of her dress in a ‘Y” shape. It’s hard to tell how she achieved this, but by zooming in you can see that most likely she just doubled up the piece of ribbon and looped it through itself in the front and tucked the end in the top of the dress.

1773
Below is a fun portrait that has a lot of neat things going on, but as far as her neckwear is concerned, it looks like she is wearing a black silk ribbon that is a half inch thick. It is tied in the back and it also has a drop with a good size cross on the end of it. It looks to me like she made a small loop of ribbon, slid the cross on it, and then tied that to the front of the loop of ribbon going around her neck. Pretty simple to do.

1770
This little girl below has a similar necklace to the one shown in the first painting. This shows that this kind of neckwear wasn’t only for adults. It’s hard to tell if this ties in the back or not, but the double ribbon in the front tells me that most likely it’s not and it put together in the same way as the first painting.

1790
This painting below is a little later than the others, but I really like it because it’s not a ‘portrait’ so to speak. It depicts someone of the ‘everyday’ wearing a ribbon necklace. Unlike the others though, she has the ribbon tied in a knot in the front, close up it looks like maybe a thin silk that is a forest green (maybe black) color. Again this looks like it is a half-inch thick.

I hope these examples give you a better idea of the type of necklaces an 18th century woman would have worn. As you can see it wasn’t anything too complicated and relatively simple to duplicate.

18th Century Jewelry

So I had previously posted about my request for crafts on the Historical Trekkers forum. Well I went back today and Mike had another suggestion for me:

On a different message board (the Nouvelle France section), Ike posted some pics of a Chaplet he made with simple beads and brass wire. A Chaplet is a short version of a Rosary. It only requres some proper beads for the correct time period, some brass wire, plus a round-nose pliers to do the twisting/bending, and a cutter to nip the wire to length, and a repro of an original cross for the end. The rest is carefull bending/twisting of the wire to form the wire links, and to add the loops to the bead to add it into your chaplet/rosary. This would have been a simple little “cottage industry” type craft, and could be demonstrated at many events. Just be careful in selecting the right type of beads, and the correct repro cross at the end.

I have done some beading as projects just for myself (not 18th century), so this sounds intriguing to me. I decided to take a stroll around the Internet and see what I could stir up on 18th century beads.

One of the interesting things I found was a pearl necklace that belonged to Abigail Adams, and is now in the Smithsonian. I found a website that is selling a reproduction of the necklace, although Abigail’s necklace was fake pearls and the one this site is selling is real pearls. (They also have some other interesting necklaces.) On the site they have a link to a portrait of Abigail wearing this type of necklace. It looks like the reproduction necklace is all one strand with ribbon attached at the ends, so you can wear it long or wrap it around your neck a few times, I like that idea. This would be fairly simple to make, I think if I just made loops on the strand of pearls and sewed the ribbon on, I could do a pretty fair job of it. I think I will give this project a try, but with fake pearls, just like the original.

I found another interesting site along the way. It looks like they are selling beads that were actually made some time between the 11th and 18th century (If I am reading this right). They are seed beads from a company that just recently shut down, but had all these antique seed beads hanging around. I guess they were used on court dresses and the such. It sounds like a line to me, but I suppose it could be true. They are a bit expensive, but if it were true, it might be nice to have a few if for nothing else but to try and match them to current seed beads and pick a good replacement (at a cheaper price)! Here is the write-up from their site:

18th century French opalescent seed beads. On spools of wire around 14 beads to an inch. Sold by the foot of beads on wire. A pale opalescent cornflower blue. We feel so fortunate to have come acress these amazing beads. We have 8 antique spools in the colors above. The spools are of iron, wood or of a type of pressboard with the spool company “Chauny-Perigeueux” embossed on the spool. These beads came from a very old French glass house of Salvatore. Originally in located in Venice, famiglia Salvatore moved its glass house to France in the 11th century. Up through the end of the eighteen century these beads were produced and then stored in large canvas bags. In the 19th century they were strung on fine wire and wound on the spools we have today. The beads were made for costume and textile decoration for royalty and gentry. They were originally used to decorate court gowns and costumes for weddings, baptisms, balls, coronations. The company closed early in the 20th century and we have been told that the remaining spools are just being distributed for the first time.

Google really didn’t come up with much as far as 18th century beads were concerned. I probably didn’t try looking as hard as I could have, I will probably do some more looking later. But I could use those seed beads (or cheaper look-a-likes) to hand make crosses pretty easily I think. I also couldn’t find much information about the style of cross that would be appropriate. Maybe google isn’t my best research friend when it comes to the 18th century!! I may have to actually resort to looking in some books … *gasp* … what’s a girl to do? Or maybe I will just send a message back to Mike and ask if he has more information on the appropriate stuff to use, now that’s my kind of research!!

Also check on my other article on this subject, it includes paintings as well!

Believe me yours faithfully,
Rachel