Jewellery Terms

When we are searching for jewellery we all make the occasional typographical, or absent minded mistakes. The following are some of them.

Jewellry, jewlery, jewlry, broach, brotch, braclet, neckless, neclace, earing.

But apart from these errors there are some jewellery terms which can confuse us without being incorrect. On this page you will find some commonly used terms relating to vintage costume jewellery and costume jewellery in general.

Metals used in costume jewellery

Pot metal. This is a metal of unspecified content. It was mixed to suit the purpose, or to reflect the availability of cheap metals, at any particular time. You can find pot metals which are soft and easily bent and others which are hard and brittle. They generally have low melting points and easy working characteristics, as well as a resistance to oxidisation. Pot metal will generally have a content including lead, tin, zinc, copper or antimony, and bismuth, it has a high zinc content with the other metals in lower proportion. It is not a hard wearing metal.
REMEMBER the term pot metal is used to describe a silvery coloured alloy, nothing more.

Pewter Until the mid 17th century, in Britain, there were two accepted standards of pewter these were fine pewter and lay pewter. Both were mainly tin with additions of lead, copper and bismuth. In the following era to the end of the 18th century there was a different formula where the copper element was mostly replaced by antimony. It is unlikely that you will find many items of costume jewellery in pewter from these periods. By 1800 an new formula called Britannia metal was in widespread use, there is some disagreement as to whether or not this can be classed as pewter. This had 6% antimony and was suitable for mass production.
Modern pewter has done away with the lead content for health reasons and so is an alloy of 90%, or more, tin with the rest made up of copper, antimony, bismuth or silver.

Aluminium
When aluminium was first produced it was so expensive that it was used as a precious metal but it is now so common that it is used for disposable foils and drinks cans. This doesn’t change the fact that it has many characteristics which made it ideal for use in jewellery. It is a very stable metal which doesn’t tarnish, it is lightweight and it takes an extremely high polish, so high that it makes a good mirror. It also can be cast easily and at low temperatures and can be given different surface colours by passing an electrical current through it while in water. Its disadvantages are that it is easily scratched and bent and that sections are best joined by mechanical means, such as rivets, rather than soldering.

Copper

Brass

Nickel silver

Silver. This is a ‘precious metal’ and comes in varying standards. The common standard now is to mark in parts per 1000, so the 925 mark means there are 925 units of silver to a mix of 75 units of other metals or elements in the alloy composition.
British standards have been set for many centuries. Costume jewellery uses silver both as a plating agent and as solid silver. The line between a piece being judged to be costume or fine jewellery is usually determined by the quality of the other metals and stones which are used with it.

Gold. As with silver this is a ‘precious metal’ and is marked according to the units of gold per thousand parts of the alloy. Gold is used in costume jewellery as a plating agent, if a piece uses solid gold it is considered to be fine jewellery.

Stones used in costume jewellery

This is a very complicated area due to all the lab-created stones that are now available. To judge if a piece should be classed as costume jewellery or fine jewellery can be quite a subjective judgement at some times but generally it is the overall mix of metals and stones used which make the distinction.
Vintage costume jewellery is generally clearly different from vintage fine jewellery as far as materials are concerned but as costume jewellery developed to mimic ‘real’ jewellery as accurately as possible very good, clean ‘fake’ looks ‘real’ unless subject to close inspection.

Semi-precious stones
These are naturally occurring stones which have some ‘defect’ which prevents them being as ‘good’ as precious stones. Precious stones are usually transparent, hard wearing, difficult to scratch or break, able to take and retain a high polish, and relatively rare. So if a stone is opaque it will stay in the semi-precious category even if it has all the other qualities which make it good for wearing. Semi-precious stones are often used in fine jewellery as well as in costume jewellery. So it isn’t possible to say, for example, that a piece of jewellery containing opals must be costume jewellery because opal is a semi-precious stone, although it would be reasonable to assume that a piece which used quartz as the stone is likely to be costume jewellery as quartz is a very common material.

Imitation stones
You would imagine it would be easy to define what are imitation stones. Everything which is not naturally occurring must be an imitation made by man.
This is undoubtedly true, but as a naturally occurring sapphire and a man made sapphire are chemically identical and have been forged by undergoing the same amount of heat and pressure then ‘imitation’ seems to be the wrong word. There are also stones that have been made to imitate other stones, like moissanite or cubic zirconia does diamonds, which are artificial constructs yet have ornamental value in their own rights, it also seems wrong to use the term ‘imitation’ to cover these as well. So for the purposes of this discussion the term ‘imitation stones’ can be taken to mean those constructs which are capable of being cheaply and easily mass produced to give an effect similar to a real stone when viewed from a distance.

GLASS is the most commonly used imitation stone and has been used for this purpose since at least the ancient Egyptian times. They started by making imitation opaque stones; but as glass techniques improved through the centuries it became possible to create transparent glass which was both resilient and sparkly and mimicked precious gem stones.

PLASTIC imitations are also very common in vintage costume jewellery. In modern costume jewellery their use has been greatly reduced as there are now many cheap man-made stones which can be used instead

Specialist Jewellery Terms

Patina, patination. This refers to surface colour changes to metal, these changes may be a result of natural ageing or they may be deliberately caused to create a desired effect.
Patination occurs when the surface molecules of the metal change due to contact with elements or compounds; such as oxygen in the atmosphere (oxidization) or natural body oils, or oils and other ingredients used in perfumes, or acids found in fruit juices. Almost anything can start the process of patination and the longer or more frequent the contact the more pronounced the effect will be. Some metals develop patinas more quickly and easily than others, gold does not develop a patina.