We Found a Time Capsule

Hello Jewelry Lovers!

The last few weeks have been fun. We discovered a lost lot of vintage designs that (mostly) we thought we were sold out of. We've listed 85 new designs including some early Laurel Burch pieces, a handful of brooches and a lot of other fun earrings. Read on for a deep dive into these projects and more.

A Time-Capsule

Some twenty-five years ago the bottom fell out of the domestic market for enamel jewelry for a bit. Shashi sent dozens and dozens small lots of earrings overseas to gauge international interest. As sometimes happens with these things, they ended up in a distant cousins nephews closet and were mostly forgotten about.

But my fathers cousins nephew is engaged to be married this year. He's trying to free up some space in his closet and make a bit more room around his house, which is difficult when your closet is filled with thousands upon thousands of earrings. And so it transpired that these pieces by Shashi, Laurel Burch and even a handful of designs by Maureen Mccaffrey (Thousand Flowers Jewelry) were sent back to us.

We're in the process of photographing these pieces and putting the earrings into inventory. Dozens of designs - many of which we thought were sold out of.

A Little More Laurel

On the subject of vintage enamel jewelry, our photographer and I are making good progress on listing "new" Laurel Inc pieces. As with all of the Laurel Inc stock - these vintage designs were manufactured in the 1970s.

Like all of the products we carry, these earrings were made entirely by hand. They started life as 925 silver pieces. The enameling was made of ground glass and delicately applied to the base - then they were baked at a high temperature. For most of these designs the application of enamels and kiln firing was repeated three times. Only after this process was gold plating applied.

Shown above are 10 of the 21 Laurel Inc pieces added in the last two weeks. Click the link below to see the other 11 (and the other 200 or so designs we carry in Laurels line).

Passion of the Pins

As promised, this month I've been working my way through our collection of pins and brooches. I'm adding lots of new items and updating photography for existing ones. Above and below are 5 of the 20 pins and brooches added and updated since the last Museletter - click below to see the full selection.

Nefertiti's Ring

A month or two back I discussed some of the delays covid was causing for my on-demand line, and how I'm moving to cast versions of products where possible. Though the worst of the delays have been mitigated, I'm still working through molds and metalurgy to get manufactured versions of many of my pieces spun up.

Above are Nefertiti's Rings in brass and silver. These reproductions depict King Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti as Shu and Tefnut. The artifact version was forged around 1350 BC and is housed at the Met.

Its a bit less expensive to cast these at a foundry (as opposed to 3d printing and casting on demand) so you can get both these rings for 20% off right now.

Peridot Deuxième Partie

August's birthstone, Peridot is on sale right now. In the last Museletter we covered a half dozen peridot pieces - here are more staff favorites to peruse.

Website Updates

New Collections

Sometimes stones are neither faceted nor cabochon - we've added some collections to help reflect this. Beaded jewelry and carved jewelry are the first iterations but expect more stone shapes in the near future. Additionally we've added a collection to house designs by Thousand Flowers jewelry, expect this one to grow a bit in the near future.

Additionally we've added a collection to house designs by Thousand Flowers jewelry, expect this one to grow a bit in the near future.

New Designs

I managed to sneak in some of the new designs above so I'm going to keep it brief here. Below are 15 of the 85 designs we've added in the last two weeks, as always you can see all our designs sorted by the freshest stuff here and everything featured below is on sale.