All That Shines

Terms of Common Stones and Techniques in Costume Jewelry

AGATE: A chalcedony composed of strong, curved bands of color and is invariably stained to display its contrasting shades. Different names describe the various colors.

AMBER: A fossilized resin which oozes from certain types of coniferous trees millions of years ago. Baltic amber is the most common variety of amber used in antique jewelry.

ARTIFICIAL PEARLS: Early imitation pearls consisted of hollow opalescent glass beads which were sprayed with essence d’ orient, a solution composed primarily of fish scales. Most modern artificial pearls are simply sprayed glass beads.

ASSEMBLED STONE: A composite stone made of two or more layers cemented or fused together and usually intended to appear as a whole natural stone.

AURORA BOREALIS: An iridescent polychrome metallic coating used to create spectral colors on rhinestones. Created by the Swarovski Corp. in 1955.

BERYL: A mineral that includes several varieties of gemstones, especially emerald and aquamarine.

BOG-OAK: A dull, dark brown wood from Irish peat bogs. Used in the Victorian era as a cheap substitute for JET, for inexpensive mourning jewelry.

CAMEO: A stone or shell, usually composed of two differently colored layers, which has been carved so that a raised image in one color stands out on a background of another color.

CHALCEDONY: The cryptocrystalline variety of quartz that is usually pale blue or gray, uniform in tint, but some varieties of which have varicolored internal bands or markings.

CHRYSOBERYL: A variety of gemstone that is characteristically yellow but varies from golden-yellow and brown to yellowish-green or bluish green. Alexandrite is the color-changing variety.

CORAL: A hard, calcareous, organic substance that is the skeleton of small marine invertebrates that live in colonies.

CORUNDUM: A mineral (aluminum oxide) that is the hardest mineral other than diamond. Corundum exhibits a wide range of colors. Red being ruby, and all other colors called sapphires.

CUBIC ZIRCONIA: A synthetic gemstone that is a simulant for a diamond and has been produced since 1977.

CULTURED PEARLS: Pearls created artificially by inserting a small bead of glass or mother-of-pearl into the mollusk and farming the resulting product on a commercial scale. Kokichi Mikimoto was the first to successfully culture spherical pearls in 1915.

DIAMANTÉ: A colorless paste used for decorating inexpensive costume jewelry or for attaching to dress material as decoration.

DIAMOND: A precious stone that is pure crystallized carbon. It is the hardest substance known.

DIAMOND PASTE: A variety of paste made of very fine lead glass, ground, fused, cooled and polished, and used to imitate colorless gemstones, especially the diamond.

DOUBLET: A composite stone made of two layers cemented or fused together and usually intended to appear as a whole natural stone.

ENAMEL: A pigment of a vitreous nature composed usually of powdered potash and silica, bound with oil, colored with metallic oxides, and applied to porcelain, gold, silver, copper, glass, etc., as a surface decoration by low-temperature firing.

ENHANCED: Taking an inferior quality gemstone and elevating it to a superior appearance.

FRENCH JET: Black glass.

FRUIT SALAD: A style of jewelry with the stones carved to resemble flowers, fruits, and leaves. They were inlaid into swathes of tiny, faceted diamonds to form stylized Art Deco designs, notably baskets and vases.

GARNET: A group of minerals that includes six main varieties of gemstones. The principal varieties are: grossular, pyrope, almandine, andradite, spessartite, and uvarovite. The traditional color is dark red, but the stones are found in many colors and shades, depending on the chemical composition.

GUTTA PERCHA: A natural substance from the Malayan palaquium tree. Used as a jet substitute.

HAIR JEWELRY: Articles of jewelry made of or embellished with human hair.

HAIRWORK: A type of hair jewelry made of hair of a deceased person and woven or plaited into strands that were given a gold mount so as to be used as a bracelet, necklace or watch-chain. Such pieces were worn as a form of Victorian mourning jewelry.

IVORY: A hard, creamy-white, opaque dentine that forms the tusks of elephants and some other mammals.

JASPER: fine-grained, impure, massive quartz aggregate.

JET: A compact, velvet-black substance that is a variety of lignite or coal, being formed by pressure, heat and chemical action on ancient driftwood. It has a glossy brownish-black surface and a black interior. Whitby jet being the most well known takes a high polish and is light in weight.

LAPIS LAZULI: A gemstone that is massive, typically of a deep-blue color but sometimes with mottling of white.

LAVALIER: An article of jewelry consisting of a pendant suspended on a chain or light necklace.

LEAD GLASS: A type of glass containing a high percentage of lead oxide. Lead oxide has been used to enhance the brilliance of glass for the use in manufacturing artificial gemstones. Lead glass is soft, and has a high color dispersion that gives it strong brilliance.

MICROMOSAIC: An object decorated with many small adjacent pieces of inlaid varicolored glass or stone arranged to form a picture or design.

MOISSANITE: A silicon carbide diamond simulant that came on the market in 1998.

MOTHER-OF-PEARL: The hard, smooth iridescent inner lining of the shell of certain mollusks (e.g. pearl, oyster, abalone).

MOURNING JEWELRY: Various articles of jewelry worn in memory of a deceased person during periods of mourning.

NÉGLIGÉE: A flexible chain of beads, pearls, links of a precious metal, or rope-like strands, about 50 to 75 cm long, that is hung or looped around a woman’s neck, having no clasp and usually terminating with tassels on each end.

OPAL: A gemstone that is usually characterized by flashing mixture of prismatic colors of delicate hues when light falls upon the surface.

PARURE: A set of jeweled ornaments decorated or made of the same variety of gemstone, and intended to be worn at the same time, such as a necklace, bracelets, brooch, and earrings.

PASTE: Glass of several types. Originally, paste was glass that was ground into a paste, molded, and then melted. The final piece was an opaque, highly leaded, dense glass with a frosted surface. Paste was also backed by a copper or silver lining.

PÂTE DE VERRE: Literally, glass paste. A material produced by grinding glass to a powder, adding a fluxing medium so that it could be readily melted, and then coloring it. Objects were made of it in a mould and firing fused the material. The process was used in ancient Greece to simulate gemstones set in finger rings and was used in France in the 19th century, especially, as to jewelry, for articles made in Art Nouveau style.

PEARLS: A dense, lustrous concretion, formed within the shell of certain mollusks.

PIQUÉ: A style of decoration of small luxury articles of tortoise shell made with inlaid minute points or strips of gold or silver.

PLIQUE-À-JOUR: A technique of decoration in enameling by which the design is outlined in metal and filled in with variously colored transparent enamels but with no backing behind the enamel, so that the effect is similar to a stained glass window.

QUARTZ: A mineral that is a form of silica, which commonly occurs as crystals. There are three basic varieties: (1) CRYSTALLINE, including Amethyst, Citrine, Rose Quartz, and Smoky Quartz. (2) CRYPTOCRYSTALLINE, including Chalcedony (in several varieties). (3) MASSIVE, including Jaspers (in several varieties).

RESIN: A solid organic substance exuded from pine- or fir-trees. It is amorphous, translucent, and yellowish to brown.

RHINESTONE: A man-made, colorless or colored, iridescent, highly refined glass. The glass was first colored the desired color by the introduction of various metals and then pressed into molds to create the final shape. Rhinestones are typically backed with a gold or silver wash. The term came from the Rhine River in Austria. In the late 1800s, the river was filled with quartz pebbles in brilliant colors. As the source depleted, rhinestones replaced them.

Note: In 1891, Daniel Swarovski of southern Austria, revolutionized the rhinestone business by creating vacuum plating for the backs of stones with silver and gold. He also created a machine that could mechanically cut faceted glass. Swarovski’s stones today, thought of as the highest quality rhinestones, are used by more than 85 percent of the American jewelry companies.

ROCK CRYSTAL: The colorless variety of quartz.

RUTILE: A mineral that is reddish-brown to red, sometimes yellowish, and has a brilliant luster. Synthetic rutile was developed in 1948 and used as a diamond simulant.

SAUTOIR: A woman’s long neck chain, worn loosely from the shoulders and extending down to below the waist. Some have a jeweled pendant or a tassel suspended at the bottom.

SHELL: The outer hard covering of certain mollusks, turtles, etc., which is used for various purposes, including making or decorating certain objects of jewelry.

SIMULATE/IMITATION: Any type of gem material-natural or artificial-sold as a look-alike.

SPINEL: A gemstone that is found in a wide range of colors and shades.

SUITE: The same as a parure.

SYNTHETIC: An artificial, man-made stone used in the same manner as a natural gemstone, having the same appearance, and chemical composition.

TURQUOISE: A gemstone that is bluish, greenish-blue, grayish-green or sky-blue.

TREMBLANT: A piece of jewelry decorated with a flower or other motif that has at the top stiff projecting wires (embellished with gemstones) that tremble when the piece is subjected to any movement.