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This is why reading this informative article will get you clued up so you know exactly what to look for and how to spot a genuine piece. If you want to discover something beautiful from a trusted and established antique jewellery supplier, you can check out the finest antique jewellery in Sydney at Kalmar Antiques.
Firstly, you should make sure you find out important information about the details of how the piece was made. This might be by seeing accompanying documents and having a good chat with the seller to find out more about the piece. The danger is when you visit auctions and come to discover several pieces don’t have any signatures on them. This means they can be easily reproduced and faked on the black market.
IDENTIFYING GENUINE GEORGIAN JEWELLERY
Georgian jewellery is definitely coming back into fashion and to avoid being sold fakes, here are some top tips for spotting the genuine pieces. This information comes from informative sources and experts in the antique jewellery realm.
1. When looking at an item, look carefully at the characteristics.
Train yourself to develop more of a critical eye when looking deeper into the characteristics of elements such as:
- Design
- Construction
- Materials used
2. Look in the finer details
One thing you can do is start looking for commonalties in Georgian designs for that era. For example, you will discover that the popular setting for stones at the time would be the crimped collet setting. This was commonly cut to create prongs that stuck out. When cut down, they were known as Georgian collets.
The material they were made from was metal which helped prevent damage caused by moisture or rusting by keeping air out. When looking into these and you notice many gaps on the collets corners, this is a signal that the item you’re looking at may indeed be a fake.
It might be wear and tear of course which comes with the antique territory. However, it’s important you question this before buying and try and get some answers as damage should be fairly obvious.
3. Check the stones
In Georgian times, it was popular for the colourless/clear gemstones to have a silver setting and the coloured ones to have a gold setting. Clear diamonds or gems would have had additional foils to help their sparkle and reflectiveness. This helped build the value and increase attractiveness of the piece if the stone didn’t have a strong colour or reflectivity. These foils were made from silvered copper if it’s a really old piece you will be able to spot oxidation with the copper.
It’s good to look at the stones and the quality of the cut and setting. Consider just how cheap they can be priced compared to how much the final sale price is due to its antiquity. The level of craftsmanship in the era was very high so if what you see looks poorly made you should definitely question it.
4. Do you see hallmarks?
Hallmarking wasn’t usually done in the Georgian era. If you see a mark, this could be a red flag as it was only very occasionally used so it may warrant additional research.
These are all things you can check for that signal a genuine piece of Georgian jewellery so you can make a safe purchase.