The Origins of Costume Jewellery

No longer were jewels primarily keepsakes, investments, or treasured heirlooms—they were expressions of a fashionable trend in the same capacity as clothing, and also as variable. Therefore, costume jewellery went through several eras of design to reflect the modes of fashion, notably three generally accepted main ;periods; which are the Art Deco period, the Retro period, and the Art Modern period. The Art Deco period occurred primarily from about 1920 to the 1930s, and it was, of course, also the first time costume jewellery was introduced into real mass production. The style was meant to be a marriage between the creative sensibilities of art and the angular, machine-oriented era of mass production that had taken over industry by that time.Indeed, nowadays, old costume jewellery is often preserved in collections as preciously as if it was made of genuine stones and metals. The origin of cheap jewels and ornamentation cannot really be specifically dated, of course, but the real age of costume jewellery as it is recognised today came about in roughly the 1930s, when it was manufactured to accompany various fashion trends of that era. In this way, it became feasible for women to follow trends in jewellery without spending fortunes, and it thus opened up a whole new avenue of artistic freedom in jewellery-*** and design.