Antique Costume Jewelry Identification Guide: Marks, Makers & Value

What Costume Jewelry Is

Costume jewelry is jewelry made primarily from non-precious materials—base metals, glass stones, and plastics rather than gold, platinum, and mined gemstones—and designed to be decorative and fashionable rather than intrinsically valuable. The term, often credited to Coco Chanel's promotion of deliberately "fake" jewels in the 1920s, captures the idea: it is jewelry made to complete a costume or outfit, affordable enough to own in quantity and to change with the seasons. Its value, when it has value, lies almost entirely in design, maker, condition, and rarity, not in melt weight or carat.

It helps to distinguish three overlapping categories. Fine jewelry uses precious metal and genuine stones and is valued partly for its materials. Costume (or "vintage costume") jewelry is the mid-twentieth-century world of signed base-metal pieces set with rhinestones and art glass—the subject of this guide. Fashion jewelry is the modern, often disposable descendant sold today. The collectible sweet spot runs roughly from the 1920s through the 1970s, when major firms employed real designers, used good materials, and—crucially—signed their work.

Where Costume Jewelry Sits Among Collectibles

Costume jewelry borrows reading skills from across the antiques world. Judging stones and settings overlaps with the techniques in our broader antique jewelry identification guide, while many costume pieces are brooches—so the period styles, clasps, and construction covered in our guide to antique brooches apply directly. Plastic costume jewelry connects to the world of early plastics, and pieces that imitate carved shell or stone echo the techniques used to authenticate genuine cameo jewelry. Costume jewelry, in other words, is a field of its own, but one that rewards everything you already know about reading old objects.

A Short History of Costume Jewelry

Imitation jewelry is ancient, but costume jewelry as a designed, branded industry is a twentieth-century story. Its immediate ancestor was Georgian and Victorian paste—high-quality leaded glass cut and foiled to mimic diamonds—and the Victorian taste for non-precious novelties such as cut steel, jet, and mourning jewelry set with hair and black glass. By the late nineteenth century, machine production and new alloys made decorative jewelry cheap enough for a mass market.

The field exploded in the 1920s and 1930s. Chanel and Schiaparelli made "fake" jewels chic among the fashionable; Art Deco geometry suited the bright, machine-cut rhinestone; and American firms in Providence, Rhode Island—long the center of the U.S. jewelry trade—and New York scaled up to feed the demand. The 1940s brought a distinctive wartime look: with base metals restricted for the war effort, makers turned to sterling silver (often gilded to a warm "vermeil"), producing the heavy, golden, big-flower brooches now prized as "sterling vermeil" costume jewelry. The 1950s were the golden age of glittering rhinestone parures, aurora borealis stones, and television-advertised brands; the 1960s and 1970s added bold modernist and revival styles before the industry's craft quality broadly declined.

Why the History Matters for Identification

This timeline is a dating tool in itself. A heavy gilded sterling brooch with big stylized flowers very likely dates to the wartime 1940s; a riot of aurora borealis rhinestones points to the mid-1950s or later (the AB coating was introduced in 1955); crisp Deco geometry in pot metal suggests the 1930s. Knowing roughly when materials, finishes, and styles appeared lets you place a piece in its decade before you have even found the mark—and tells you immediately when something "old-looking" is using a material that did not yet exist.

The Metals: Pot Metal to Vermeil

Because costume jewelry is defined by its non-precious materials, learning the metals is fundamental—both to identification and to understanding why a piece survived or corroded the way it did. The base metal also helps date a piece and, occasionally, reveals real silver content that raises its value.

The workhorse of pre-war costume jewelry was "pot metal" (also called white metal or base metal): a soft, grayish alloy, typically zinc-based, that cast easily into intricate shapes and was then plated. Brass and gilded brass were common, especially in Victorian and earlier-twentieth-century work. During World War II, metal restrictions pushed makers to sterling silver, frequently finished with a gold wash to produce vermeil (gold over sterling)—so a "gold" 1940s brooch marked "STERLING" is silver underneath. Post-war pieces returned to base metal finished as "gold tone" (gilt), "silver tone," or bright rhodium plating, which gave a durable, white, tarnish-resistant surface ideal for rhinestone settings.

Japanned Metal and Surface Finishes

A finish worth knowing is "japanned" metal—a black-lacquered base that became fashionable as a dramatic backdrop for colored or red rhinestones, especially from the 1940s onward. Recognizing finishes matters because they date and characterize a piece: a sterling mark signals wartime origin and a little intrinsic value; rhodium and bright base-metal plating suggest post-war manufacture; japanned black points to mid-century rhinestone work. As with all metalwork, distinguishing a true precious metal from a clever imitation is a core skill, and the same logic that separates real silver from plated wares in our antique silver identification guide applies when you find a "STERLING" stamp hiding under the gilt of a costume brooch.

Rhinestones, Paste & Art Glass Stones

If metal is the body of costume jewelry, stones are its sparkle—and the type, cut, color, and setting of those stones are among the strongest clues to quality, maker, and date. The vast majority are glass, but glass of widely varying refinement, from cheap pressed beads to the leaded crystal that defines the finest pieces.

The aristocrat of costume stones is the rhinestone—a faceted glass stone, usually backed with a thin metallic foil to bounce light back and increase brilliance. The best were made by Daniel Swarovski's Austrian works and by Bohemian glasshouses, the same regions famous for fine Bohemian glass. Older, high-quality faceted glass is often called paste, a term carried over from Georgian leaded-glass jewelry. A landmark in dating is the aurora borealis (AB) finish—an iridescent, oil-on-water coating introduced by Swarovski and Christian Dior in 1955—so any piece with genuine AB stones cannot predate the mid-1950s. Beyond clear "diamanté," costume jewelry uses a rainbow of colored stones plus opaque and translucent art glass "stones," molded glass cabochons, faux pearls, and the milky "moonstone" and "givré" glass beloved of certain makers.

How Stones Are Set—and Why It Matters

The way a stone is held tells you a great deal. Prong-set (or "claw-set") stones, gripped by little metal claws exactly as in fine jewelry, indicate better quality and generally earlier-to-mid-century work; glued-in stones, dropped into shallow cups with adhesive, signal cheaper or later manufacture (though even good makers glued some stones). Foiled stones sparkle but are vulnerable: if water seeps behind the foil it "dies," turning dark and dull, which is the single most common flaw in vintage rhinestone jewelry. Learning to spot prong versus glue, foiled versus unfoiled, and live versus dead stones is essential both to judging quality and to assessing condition before you buy.

Plastics: Bakelite, Lucite & Thermoset

Alongside metal and glass, plastic is a whole branch of costume jewelry with its own collectors, its own values, and its own identification challenges. Early plastics turned costume jewelry into a field of bright color and bold carving, and some plastic pieces command prices far above their metal contemporaries.

The star is Bakelite, a phenolic resin of the 1930s and 1940s carved and cast into bangles, brooches, dress clips, and figural novelties in warm ambers, reds, greens, and butterscotch. It is dense, warm to the touch, and—famously—gives off a faint chemical or "formaldehyde" smell when rubbed briskly or run under hot water, a classic field test. Related early plastics include celluloid (lightweight, flammable, often imitating ivory or tortoiseshell) and Lucite (a clear acrylic of the 1940s–1960s used for "jelly belly" animals, confetti, and reverse-carved pieces). Post-war thermoset plastics produced the molded, often pastel "moonglow" and lacy plastic jewelry of the 1950s.

Identifying and Valuing Plastics

Distinguishing these plastics is its own skill, covered in depth in our guide to Bakelite, Catalin & early plastics—and it pays, because genuine carved Bakelite can be valuable while later look-alikes are not. Some celluloid and Lucite pieces imitate carved tortoiseshell and ivory so convincingly that material tests are needed to tell them apart. Beware that "Bakelite" is heavily faked and that genuine pieces can be reproduced in modern resin; the smell test, the heft, the carving quality, and the sound (Bakelite "clunks" rather than "clicks") all help separate the real thing from impostors.

Reading Maker's Marks

The single most valuable habit in costume jewelry is to turn every piece over and read the back. A maker's mark—stamped, cast, or applied on a small cartouche—can multiply a piece's value many times over, and the presence, wording, and style of that mark are also powerful dating tools. The difference between an anonymous rhinestone brooch and a signed one is often the whole difference between five dollars and five hundred.

Marks take several forms: cast into the metal during molding (common on heavier pre-war pieces), stamped with a die, or applied as a tiny soldered cartouche or hang tag. The wording may be a full company name (TRIFARI, EISENBERG), an abbreviation or logo (a crown over "Trifari," the script "Corocraft"), or initials (BSK, JJ, ART). Crucially, the mark often includes legal and patent information that dates the piece: a "PAT. PEND." or a specific design patent number ties it to a filing date, and—most useful of all—the presence of the copyright symbol © next to the maker's name indicates manufacture after 1955, when U.S. firms began copyrighting jewelry designs. A mark without the © may well be earlier.

Marks as Dating Evidence

Individual companies also changed their marks over time, so the exact form of a signature narrows the date further: Trifari used "KTF" in the 1930s, plain "Trifari" and the crown logo later, and added the © after 1955; Coro used "Coro," the elegant "CoroCraft" and "Corocraft," and the leaping-Pegasus mark on its better lines. Learning these mark variations turns a signature into a date range. Reading and recording marks precisely—including patent numbers and the all-important copyright symbol—is exactly the disciplined approach used to decode hallmarks and maker's stamps across antiques, and it is the foundation of both attribution and dating, much as provenance and authentication research underpins value throughout the field.

The Great American Makers

Most collectible costume jewelry was made in the United States, and a relatively short list of firms accounts for the lion's share of the value. Learning these names—and the look and quality associated with each—lets you recognize a maker's hand even on an unsigned piece, and tells you instantly when a signature is a prize.

Trifari (with designer Alfred Philippe) is the blue-chip name: superb rhodium-plated, prong-set rhinestone work, the celebrated enamel-and-cabochon "Crown" and "Jelly Belly" Lucite figurals, and a crown logo. Coro and its upscale CoroCraft line were the largest American maker, ranging from ordinary to exquisite, and famous for the "Coro Duette" double clip. Eisenberg—originally a dress company—made some of the most lavish, high-quality clear rhinestone pieces using large Swarovski stones, the early ones marked "Eisenberg Original" and highly sought. Miriam Haskell is prized for intricate, hand-wired Russian-gold-plated filigree set with faux baroque pearls and Bohemian glass. Other major names include Boucher (Marcel Boucher, refined naturalistic figurals), Mazer/Jomaz, Reja, Pennino, and Hobé (delicate "jewels of legendary splendor").

The Mid-Market and Mass-Market Names

A second tier of well-collected makers includes Weiss (superb rhinestones, especially smoky and "black diamond" stones and japanned settings), Kramer, Schreiner (bold, "tension-set" inverted stones), Juliana (the trade name collectors use for the distinctive, lavish work of DeLizza & Elster, which was actually unsigned—identified by construction alone), and the popular mid-market brands Monet, Napier, Lisner, Coventry (Sarah Coventry), BSK, and Pell. Knowing the hierarchy—Eisenberg, Trifari, Boucher, and Haskell at the top; Weiss and Schreiner in the strong middle; Coventry and Lisner as accessible, abundant brands—lets you gauge likely value the moment you read a signature, and even attribute the famous unsigned "Juliana" pieces by their telltale five-link construction and puddled glue.

European and Designer Houses

While America dominated volume, some of the most coveted costume jewelry came from Europe and from couture designers, and these pieces occupy the highest tier of the market. Recognizing the names and the national styles helps you spot a genuine rarity among the ordinary.

From the couture houses came jewelry as art: Chanel, which legitimized costume jewelry in the 1920s and whose early and "Goossens"-era pieces are intensely collected; Schiaparelli, famous for surreal designs and unusual iridescent "watermelon" and lava stones; and later Christian Dior and Christian Lacroix, much of whose jewelry was made by specialist German firms such as Henkel & Grosse. From Canada, Sherman is legendary for using top-grade Swarovski stones in flawless settings, prized especially when in vivid or unusual colors. Hollywood contributed Joseff of Hollywood, whose distinctive "Russian gold" matte-finish jewelry adorned countless films and is eagerly collected.

National Styles and What They Signal

Beyond named makers, regional traditions help with attribution. Czech (Bohemian) costume jewelry of the 1920s–1930s is known for filigree, molded glass, and richly colored stones; German firms produced high-quality post-war pieces for the couture houses; English makers such as Mitchel Maer (who made for Dior) and the long-running firm later known for "Exquisite" and "Sphinx" supplied a strong home market. A piece whose style, stones, and quality point to Chanel, Schiaparelli, Sherman, or a couture-house collaboration is potentially very valuable indeed—another reason to read the mark carefully and to know that the absence of a familiar American name does not mean the absence of value.

Dating by Clasps and Findings

When a piece is unsigned—as most costume jewelry is—the findings (the functional fittings: clasps, pin mechanisms, and earring backs) become your best dating tool. These hardware details changed in fairly well-documented ways over the decades, so reading them lets you place an anonymous piece in its era with surprising confidence.

On brooches and pins, the pin closure is the key. The early "C-clasp"—a simple open hook the pin tucks into—dominates pre-1900 and lingers into the early twentieth century; the trombone clasp (a tube the pin slides into, pushed by a sliding sleeve) is common on European and earlier pieces; the modern locking "safety C" or rotating safety catch becomes standard from roughly the 1910s–1930s onward. Pin length is also telling: very early brooch pins often extend well beyond the body of the piece (a holdover from pinning into heavy Victorian fabric), while later pins end within the frame. On earrings, screw-backs dominate before the late 1930s, clip-backs arrive in the 1930s and prevail through mid-century, and posts for pierced ears largely return only from the late 1960s and 1970s.

Necklace Clasps and Other Clues

Necklace and bracelet clasps add further evidence: spring-ring clasps appear early and continue; fold-over (box) clasps are common mid-century; hook-and-eye and barrel clasps each have their periods; and the ubiquitous modern lobster-claw clasp is largely a sign of recent manufacture, a red flag on anything claimed to be pre-1970s. Combined with the metal, the finish, the stones, and the style, the findings let you triangulate a date even with no signature at all—exactly the kind of construction-based reasoning that dates furniture and other antiques, where the hardware and joinery betray the era. This same skill is what allows experts to attribute the unsigned "Juliana" pieces purely from their construction.

Settings and Construction Quality

Beyond dating, the quality of construction is what separates a great piece of costume jewelry from a forgettable one—and quality is something you can learn to see. Two brooches can use similar stones yet differ enormously in value because one is beautifully made and the other is crude.

Look first at how the stones are set. Hand prong-setting, with each stone individually clawed, signals care and generally higher quality and value; rows of stones glued into channels are cheaper. Examine the back: better pieces have finished, articulated, even decorated backs (Miriam Haskell's famous filigit work is finished front and back), while cheap pieces show raw, rough, or messy reverses with visible glue. Note whether colored stones are foiled and "live" or have dulled, and whether the metalwork is crisp and detailed or soft and poorly cast. Open-backed settings (which let light through the stones) often indicate higher quality than fully closed, glued cups.

Hallmarks of the Best Work

The finest costume jewelry shows touches borrowed from fine jewelry: articulated elements that move, en tremblant springs that make flowers quiver, mixed metal tones, carefully graduated stones, and the use of unusual art glass rather than plain rhinestones. These are the features that distinguish an Eisenberg or a Schreiner from a five-and-dime brooch, and they are exactly the qualities a careful eye learns to weigh when judging any decorative object's craftsmanship. When you assess a piece, ask not just "who made it?" but "how well is it made?"—because in a field where the materials are cheap by definition, design and workmanship are where the value lives.

Fur Clips, Dress Clips & Duettes

Costume jewelry includes several distinctive object types that confuse newcomers, and recognizing them aids both identification and dating. The most important are the clip forms that flourished from the late 1920s through the 1940s, which are frequently mistaken for ordinary brooches.

A dress clip has a flat, hinged clip on the back—rather than a pin—and was clipped onto a neckline, pocket, belt, or hat; these were enormously popular in the 1930s and often came in pairs. A fur clip (sometimes called a "clip-brooch") has a stronger, double-pronged clip designed to grip heavier fabric or fur, and is typical of the late 1930s and 1940s. The clever "Duette"—Coro's patented version is the best known, with Trifari's "Clip-Mates" a rival—is a frame that holds two matching dress clips: worn together on the frame it is a single brooch; separated, the two clips can be worn apart. Spotting that a "brooch" is actually a Duette frame, or that a piece is a dress clip rather than a pin, both identifies the object and helps date it to the clip's heyday.

Parures and Sets

Costume jewelry was often sold in matching sets, and the terminology is worth knowing because complete sets are worth substantially more than singles. A parure is a full matching suite—typically necklace, bracelet, brooch, and earrings; a demi-parure is a partial set, most often just earrings and a necklace or brooch. Because sets were easily broken up over the decades, finding a maker's complete, intact parure—especially a signed one—is both a strong identification confirmation (the pieces authenticate one another) and a significant boost to value. When you find one matching earring, it is always worth hunting for its mates.

Condition and Common Damage

Because costume jewelry was made from inexpensive, sometimes fragile materials and worn hard, condition is central to value, and learning the typical faults lets you grade honestly and avoid costly mistakes. Many flaws are repairable; some are fatal to value.

The most common and most damaging flaw is the "dead" or "dark" stone: a foiled rhinestone whose backing foil has been damaged by moisture, turning it gray, brown, or black. A few dead stones in an inconspicuous spot are tolerable; many, or dead stones in a focal position, sharply reduce value, and matching replacement stones (especially old, correctly colored ones) can be difficult. Missing stones leave empty cups; plating wear exposes the base metal beneath gilt or rhodium; verdigris (a green corrosion, often where old glue has degraded) attacks metal and is hard to reverse. On plastics, watch for cracks, chips, warping, and the surface crazing or chemical instability that afflicts unstable early plastics.

Repair, Cleaning, and Honesty

Some restoration is acceptable and even expected—replacing a missing stone with an appropriate vintage one, re-securing a loose setting—but heavy-handed intervention is penalized just as it is across antiques. Over-cleaning that strips original plating, replacement stones that are the wrong color or era, and modern repairs that destroy original findings all reduce value, and the market rewards honest disclosure of what is original versus replaced. When buying, inspect every stone under good light for dead foil and chips, check the plating and the back for verdigris, and work the clasp to be sure it functions—condition problems hidden in a tangled lot are the chief way new buyers overpay. The same conservation-minded caution that governs antique restoration and conservation applies in miniature to a rhinestone brooch.

Reproductions, Fakes & Fantasy Marks

As prices for signed costume jewelry have risen, the field has attracted reproductions, "married" pieces, and outright fakery, and the modern collector must navigate them with care. Understanding the main deceptions is essential before paying a premium for a signature.

The most direct fraud is the fake or fantasy mark: modern reproductions stamped with the name of a desirable maker (counterfeit "Chanel," "Eisenberg," or "Trifari" marks do circulate), or "fantasy" marks invented to look old. A related trap is the "married" or "frankenstein" piece, assembled from parts of different items, and the genuine-but-altered piece where a signed cartouche from a damaged item has been moved onto an unsigned one. Reproductions of famous designs—Bakelite bangles, "Juliana" styles, Chanel-look pieces—are produced in quantity, some sold honestly as reproductions and some passed as vintage. Modern stones (especially crystal-clear, perfectly cut, machine-set rhinestones) and modern findings (the lobster claw, glued posts) on a supposedly old piece are major red flags.

How to Protect Yourself

The defenses are the familiar ones. Learn the genuine marks and their correct fonts, logos, and periods, so a wrong typeface or an anachronistic © gives a fake away. Verify that the findings, stones, and construction match the claimed era—a "1930s" brooch with a lobster clasp and AB stones is impossible. Be wary of a famous signature offered cheaply, buy from reputable dealers and specialist sellers, and for expensive pieces seek a professional appraisal and any available provenance. As always in collecting, knowledge is the best protection: a buyer who knows that AB stones postdate 1955, that the © symbol means post-1955, and that a given maker never used a particular clasp is largely immune to the most common and most expensive frauds.

Value, Rarity & a Field Checklist

Costume jewelry value is set by a handful of interacting factors, and understanding how they combine prevents both overpaying for the ordinary and overlooking a treasure in a junk box. The governing variables are maker (signature), design and quality, materials, condition, completeness, and rarity.

The crucial insight is that value lives in the combination, not in any single factor. A signature alone does not guarantee value—Coro and Coventry made plenty of common, inexpensive pieces—and an unsigned piece can be valuable if the design and quality are exceptional (the unsigned "Juliana" line is the classic case). The prizes are pieces that unite a top maker, a great design, fine materials and workmanship, excellent condition, and—where applicable—a complete set. A signed Eisenberg parure with live stones and crisp plating can be worth a great deal; the same maker's single, stone-dead brooch is worth a fraction. This is why two superficially similar rhinestone brooches can differ in price by two orders of magnitude, and why patient, knowledgeable buyers do so well in this field.

A Field Checklist Before You Buy

When you have a candidate piece in hand—at a flea market, an estate sale, an antique mall, or in a tangled lot—work through a consistent routine. First, turn it over and read the back: look for any mark, note its exact wording and logo, and check for a copyright © (post-1955), patent numbers, or "PAT. PEND." Second, identify the materials: base metal, sterling, or plastic; rhinestone, paste, or art glass; foiled or unfoiled stones. Third, date the findings: clasp type, pin length, earring backs—and confirm they are consistent with any signature and style. Fourth, judge the quality: prong-set or glued, finished or rough back, crisp or soft casting, live or dead stones. Fifth, inspect condition closely under good light for dead foil, missing or replaced stones, plating wear, verdigris, and plastic damage.

Finally, weigh the combination. Ask whether the mark, materials, findings, and style all agree on a maker and an era; whether the quality and condition justify the price; and whether anything—an anachronistic clasp, a too-perfect stone, a suspect font—signals a reproduction or a married piece. A common, unsigned, stone-dead brooch is a pleasant few-dollar object; a signed, well-made piece in fine condition is a genuine find. When something is offered as rare and valuable, slow down: confirm the maker's mark is correct for the period, check that the construction matches, and seek expert opinion before paying a premium. The back of the piece tells the truth—mark, metal, stones, findings, and workmanship—if you take the time to read all of it together.