Elegant Belle Époque Ring with Garnet-Red Glass and Diamonds, c. 1910

Fashion hasn’t just started changing with every season today. Even in earlier times, new styles and ideas emerged every year, and last season’s designs went out of style as quickly as the seasons changed. But how could goldsmiths’ customers keep up with this constant shift in taste? For customers with sufficient means, this was no problem. But just as today, alongside the lavishly adorned designs of the major houses, pieces were also created for those with smaller budgets: as enchanting in form and design as the most precious objects, yet crafted a little more affordably in the details. A common trick was to set the pieces of jewellery with imitation gemstones instead of real ones, so that the difference was barely noticeable. The ring shown here illustrates this well. It is made of gold and platinum, just like any piece of jewellery from the major jewelry houses. Yet as a showpiece, framed in platinum and diamonds, it by no means features a ruby or a large garnet: it is a dark-red glass, faceted by hand, that occupies the center of the ring. In fact, it was only after repeated examination that we could bring ourselves to believe that this was not a large garnet, but rather an artfully crafted piece of glass. The colour is a deep, intense red, and even small, supposed inclusions have been stirred into the glass mass to give it an even more natural appearance. Without a gemmological laboratory, the difference is imperceptible. And that was the intention: The ring employs mimicry here, purporting to be a large garnet set in a diamond frame in the style of the early 20th century. The ring is thus a true piece of costume jewellery. Crafted to a high standard and made of real gold, yet just affordable enough that it could be quickly replaced when fashions changed.

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