New York area lovers of vintage costume jewelry - or those headed in that general direction - should check out an exhibit at the Forbes Galleries on lower Fifth Avenue. Extended through March, 2011, The Vintage Woman: A Century of Costume Jewelry in America, 1910-2010 features 26 cases of fabulously faux baubles.
All the big designer names are represented here - Trifari, Miriam Haskell, Kenneth Jay Lane -as well as some known mainly to connoisseurs, such as Ciner and Coro. While they range from the early 20th century (a Chanel orchid brooch, 1915) to the early 21st (a necklace marked Stanley Hagler, 2009), most of the pieces date from the 1930s through the 1950s, a period many collectors consider the golden age of costume jewelry. That's no coincidence, as the show's curator Laurie Bogart Morrow explains in an introductory panel: Much of it was made by European immigrants who had designed precious jewelry in their homelands, and transferred their talents to paste and pot metal in this country. The result: exquisite, meticulously crafted pieces that were made almost as well as "the real thing."
Accompanying each display are portraits of women wearing the pieces: not only models, but an actress (Shannon Bolin) and a filmmaker (Lucy Jarvis). A companion book to the exhibition, by Morrow and photographer Rob Van Petten, is due out in 2011.
Vintage Woman: A Century of Costume Jewelry in America, 1910-2010
The Forbes Galleries
62 Fifth Avenue (at 12th Street)
New York, New York
Tuesday - Saturday; 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
212-206-5548; http://www.forbesgalleries.com/jewelrygallery.html