RAPAPORT... Everything old is new again, once again. From “Swingtown” to “Life on Mars,” the 1970s are alive and well on the small screen. Jewelry from that era is making its presence felt in the estate jewelry market, as well.
“Seventies jewelry was energetic and sexy,” explains private dealer Jessica Falvo, owner of Chartreuse in New York City, “and I think that’s really a modern thing and women respond to that today. It could be slick and sleek or organic and earthy, but it’s never stuffy. And it’s never formal in feel. You can throw it on, and that’s a really big appeal for women today.”
The jewelry was “everyday jewelry,” Falvo says, that suited a more energetic lifestyle. “Long necklaces with pendants that swing and many, many bracelets. You have the start of all the jewelry houses making a more accessible line.”
Doyle & Doyle, a boutique in New York City that specializes in antique and estate jewelry, noted demand from magazines for big, bold, seventies statement pieces for photo shoots. And the retailer has lent some of its more seventies-inspired pieces to the TV show, “Ugly Betty.”
“Now, 40 years later, the seventies is coming full fashion again,” says Edward Faber, co-owner/president, Aaron Faber Gallery in New York City. “So we’re selling a lot of estate jewelry of the seventies. It’s a great look. It’s becomefashionable right now.”
On the West Coast, wholesaler Deborah Wilson, owner of Vendome, Inc. in Santa Barbara, California, classifies seventies jewelry as “probably the hottest thing right now. It’s very wearable, it’s bold, it’s fun. I think it’s really the trend. As a dealer, I’m buying more of it and I’m selling more of it.”
Designs of the Decade
Falvo breaks down seventies jewelry into two groups: “There’s the organic, artist handmade trend and then there’s the very shiny, stylized side of seventies jewelry.”
“Big was having its final fling in the seventies,” says Jeff Russak, owner, Lawrence Jeffrey Estate Jewelry, Litchfield, Connecticut. “Hammerman Brothers were doing large things. David Webb and Schlumberger, who were extremely mature and very sure-footed, were doing really large pieces.” And, he continues, “You were seeing a lot of intarsia being used, stone-in-stone settings.”
In terms of influences that informed seventies jewelry, Faber cites Hans Stern, founder of H. Stern Jewelers, who introduced a new vocabulary of colored stones from
Brazil, and the return of the “big aqua stuff” that had been popular in the forties. He also notes “Jade was a big color back then.” Other design elements included pearl, onyx and “a lot of cabochon jewelry.” Faber also mentions continued interest in Native American Indian and ethnic pieces, which, he says, “were very big in the seventies.”
Then there was the smooth side of the decade, says Russak. “Biomorphic shapes seen in furniture in the late fifties and sixties found their way into jewelry, but they were plumper and more fruitlike. I think what typified the seventies the most were smooth, rounded female shapes. If you did a bangle, it was a blown-up, doughnut-y type of thing and you would inset stones. There were a lot of big bean things, twists. And you were just seeing the beginning of the commercialization of ethnic jewelry, which was coming out of the galleries and onto Fifth Avenue.”
Yellow Gold RulesThe metal of choice for the seventies was definitely yellow gold, says Wilson, “not white. The David Webb pieces in the finer lines — they got bigger and bigger in the seventies, scalewise — but they were always gold. It reflects the feeling of the times, plus women were not dressed as ladylike as in the sixties. These were designs you could wear with your jeans and that’s why they’re popular now, at least in California.”
There’s a lot of mesh, says Faber, and weaving is a “hallmark of that period,” woven designs “in a herringbone or fabric-like pattern.” And yellow gold and a color: “Gold and pearl, gold and garnet, gold andcitrine.” Accessorizing your wardrobe with gold jewelry, Faber adds, “was almost de rigueur. The great jewelry houses were starting to capitalize on that and you started seeing layers of gold bangles. You see the charm bracelet; you see the ribbon or flatter gold necklace making its statement.”
Bracelets and wider cuffs were popular, says Wilson, and yellow gold hoop earrings. “And a lot of hard stuff — lots of coral, onyx and jade.”
Textured yellow gold — sometimes florentined or engraved gold — was the look, says Russell Fogarty of Kazanjian & Fogarty, Beverly Hills, California.
Diamonds AccentDiamonds in seventies jewelry, says Faber, “tend to be, in terms of supporting design, the smaller stones with a lot of melee.”
“You can find Van Cleef & Arpels pieces from the seventies, which are longer necklaces and they have hard stones and diamonds,” says Wilson. “Those are the ones that come to mind.” But, she says, the seventies wasn’t the diamond decade. “Diamonds came back with a vengeance in the eighties.”
What there was a lot of, says Falvo, was pavé. Russak agrees. “I think that you saw a lot of patterned diamond pavé,” he says. “Large diamonds had not yet made their play. A 1½- or 2-carat diamond of that period was considered a large diamond.”
What’s SellingWhile Fogarty feels that for collectors, the seventies haven’t been “out of sight, out of mind long enough for people to have fond memories of it,” others find their clients are looking to seventies jewelry for its wearability.
Wilson notes that she’s “selling Elsa Peretti. Schlumberger cuffs are very popular. And anything that has color and gold and is a little more casual and interesting — it can even be kind of funky — is really what we’re selling. It is what everybody is looking for, especially Europeans.”
“I do a lot of textured gold, long earrings with diamonds or diamond accents,” says Falvo. And she’s “a big fan of Arthur King” as well as other New York designers. “I like David Webb, and the people who worked with David Webb.”
For Falvo, “Bracelets are a mainstay. Everybody wants a great gold bracelet.” Her younger clients, she says, “love convertible necklaces and pendants — they can take the pendant off and wear it on a cord. The necklace can become two bracelets or three bracelets. They really respond to this. I think a lot of the clothes now are really good with the seventies pieces. They tend to be really bold and they tend to go with the kinds of clothing being shown now. I think that’s part of the appeal for the younger women.”
“The mainstay of my business is seventies jewelry,” says Falvo. “That’s really what I do, primarily. For me, one of the defining characteristics of seventies jewelry is that it shows how women’s role changed. The seventies is a really important decade for women and women’s rights. And the jewelry reflects that.”
Article from the Rapaport Magazine - October 2008. To subscribe click here.