Can You Believe What You Read in Vintage Jewelry Advertising?

It’s no secret that vintage advertising in periodicals and magazines offers a wealth of costume jewelry information that can help us date pieces, learn about line names, and understand where the jewelry was sold and at which price points. Thanks to the internet, it’s easier than ever to search for these resources—they’re even found in the WorthPoint Price Guide since many ad pages sell in the online marketplace. On top of that, they can be beautifully illustrated inspirations for time-traveling daydreams.

Editorial spreads also provide clues about the usage of fashion jewelry and can help us identify unmarked styles periodically. But can you rely on everything you read in ad copy and editorial descriptions to be right on the mark, even when those blurbs originally appeared in news-related publications? As it turns out, not necessarily.

Remember, marketers writing ad copy were trying to sell products, not share accurate news that would go down in history as reference material. Sometimes editorial coverage was provided to businesses that advertised in periodicals in a “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours” effort. Hence, the line between advertising and lifestyle reporting got a bit blurred there.

With that understanding, I will expound on a few instances when this type of verbiage has been questioned, starting with one of the costume jewelry giants.

Napier’s Commencement Date

The unique situation with Napier’s founding date is that it wasn’t printed incorrectly in error; the company decided to adjust it intentionally. That means that the date shown in advertising before the late 1920s was 1878. That’s the year that The E.A. Bliss Co., the forerunner to Napier, came into existence. In the 1930s, the company began advertising 1875 as Napier’s commencement date.

Napier historian Melinda L. Lewis, who wrote The Napier Co., doesn’t know exactly why this happened, but it was indeed documented in the portion of Napier business archives she acquired. Since Napier advertised that it was established in 1875 in various places, including on the backs of hang tags found on 1950s jewelry, fighting the battle to disseminate the correct date has been challenging. Lewis even told me that she’s corrected the date to 1878 on Wikipedia several times, and others changed it back to 1875. Many online references still report the wrong date, but now you know the truth.

Who Designed McClelland Barclay Jewelry

When I received a copy of Patricia Gostick’s book, McClelland Barclay: Painter of Beautiful Women and More, it revealed some things I’d never thought to question about the jewelry bearing the mark of this distinguished artist. One of the most eye-opening things I read had to do with some blurbs that appeared in Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) in the late 1930s and early ‘40s before Barclay died serving in the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War II.

The first thing that has been alluded to in jewelry books based on WWD research was that Barclay designed the jewelry, and Rice-Weiner & Co. manufactured it. Instead, as Gostick found through interviewing former CEO Howard Weiner, the jewelry was produced under a licensing agreement and designed by Louis C. Mark, who worked for Rice-Weiner. As an aside, he also sketched the movie-related designs licensed in conjunction with Alexander Korda.

Another related misnomer is that Barclay designed some of the jewelry while deployed during the war and sent those renderings back to Rice-Weiner so they could be put into production. Apparently, none of that is true, given the fact that the jewelry was his in name only, even though it’s repeatedly referenced as McClelland Barclay’s designs.

Marks on Schiaparelli’s ‘50s Figurals

One time, I posted a photo of an unmarked Schiaparelli peacock brooch in an online group, and it sparked some questions about whether it was an original or a copy. Holding it in my hands and being familiar with Schiap details, I was positive it was authentic. However, the related ad copy for the 1957 series of Schiaparelli figurals—which includes a lobster, dragonfly, crab, and llama in addition to the peacock—says, “Look for the signature on each piece.”

Since then, those studying the line in more detail have never found a single figural shown in that ad with a mark on the actual jewelry, but they have been found with Schiaparelli foil hang tags. In this instance, it appears that the ad copy was just completely wrong.

Trifari: Every Piece is Marked

Trifari is another company advertising that its jewelry was not authentic unless stamped with the brand name. For the most part, that’s true. Only a few very early pieces, when items were marked KTF monogram style for Trifari, Krussman, and Fishel, were unmarked, along with the Petalette line dating to 1950.

To my knowledge, jewelry historians have yet to find a pin they felt was a genuine Petalette style with a Trifari mark (although some coordinating earrings are signed). Considering that millions of Trifari pieces were made over many years, that’s only a handful, but it does prove that there are a couple of documented exceptions.

My Conclusion

Call them stretches of the truth, call them errors, or whatever you like, but these are a few ad and editorial misnomers I can point to that have been proven wrong. Does that mean you can’t rely on ads and editorials as research material?

No, as mentioned previously, they do offer some solid facts as well as interesting-to-know details about many of our favorite brands of vintage costume jewelry. If you run across something that doesn’t quite make sense or seems to be at odds with what you see when you examine pieces of jewelry closely, dig deeper before deciding whether to take marketing jargon as a fact.

Pamela Siegel is a freelance writer and author who has been educating collectors for more than two decades. In addition to three books on topics relating to antiques and collectibles, she frequently shares her expertise through online writing and articles for print-based publications. Pamela is also the co-founder of Costume Jewelry Collectors Int’l (CJCI) and the proprietor of Chic Antiques by Pamela.

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