Mad About the Sixties

RAPAPORT... With the cable television show “Mad Men” garnering awards and critical attention, the sixties are alive and well and playing on the small screen. The jewelry from that time has found its own niche in the estate jewelry market, but exactly what defines the look from that ten-year span is not easy to pin down. “A lot of people break the decade up into early sixties and late sixties,” explains Malcolm Logan, one of the owners of Nelson Rarities, Portland, Maine. And the jewelry that estate dealers stock proves the point.

“Everything happened in 1968 and before that, it looks like the 1950s,” observes Jessica Falvo, retailer, principal of Chartreuse, New York City. For her, “sixties jewelry is basically lady jewelry. Really great, classically proportioned, beautifully made jewelry.” Diana Singer of D & E Singer, Inc., New York, defines the sixties as “Schlumberger and the Winstony sort of look. I have a Tiffany catalog here and there is lots and lots of yellow gold. It’s that whole Jackie Kennedy thing: elegant, ladylike, refined, beautiful, tailored.”

Benjamin Macklowe, of the Macklowe Gallery, New York City, on the other hand, sees the sixties as “bold, confident and more playful than jewelry from the forties and early fifties.” Women, he says, were opting for larger jewelry and wearing it in different ways. There was a move to “more whimsical jewelry, when you think of people like Donald Claflin and David Webb,” as well as “larger, out-of-scale jewelry. With sixties jewelry, you get a lot more work on the surface of the pieces, a lot more hammered looks and still a good bit of engraving and florentining.” Gold jewelry, says Logan, “was massive, just the sheer size of the jewelry created drama.” In men’s jewelry, particularly, he adds, “it was the era of the big, yellow-gold wristwatches and big cufflinks.”

Alan Levy, principal, J. & S.S. DeYoung, Inc., New York City, sums up the decade as “Everything was very modern.” Van Cleef and Winston, he says, “made some fabulous jewelry during the sixties. Bulgari made some of the best things and Tiffany.”

Designers with a Difference
When asked for designers associated with the sixties, Macklowe names Andrew Grima, who had a shop in London. “He used a lot of semiprecious and underappreciated materials in a novel fashion. We’ve had pendants from him in amber. He used baroque Tahitian pearls and Mexican fire opals and instead of having them as cabochons, he would facet them. The sixties is when you start to see a lot of the freedom that we associate with contemporary jewelry design, where pretty much every stone could be used in the same piece, just based on the same color palette.”

Grima, says Logan, was the “English version of David Webb and would make huge, dramatic pieces of jewelry.” Also known for big jewelry, Logan says, was New York City designer Arthur King. “He did big, clunky dramatic jewelry in a naturalistic style. The shank of the rings would have yellow gold in the form of bark and then the ring would emanate from it.”

West Coast wholesaler Deborah Wilson, owner of Vendome, Inc. in Santa Barbara, says rather than “fancy sixties jewelry,” she is selling a lot of what she calls sixties modern artist jewelry “in sterling and copper like Ed Wiener. I think these have become very collectible and they’re in an affordable price range, from $500 to $3,500. They’re really fun; they’re very clever. They were made not for their intrinsic value but more figurative. I’ve been wearing them and getting a lot of attention…they’re statement pieces.”

The Dazzle of Diamonds
“It was still very much of that Harry Winston sort of fancy-shaped stones piled on top of each other in these asymmetrical arrangements,” says Singer, in describing the decade’s diamond styles. Logan, too, notes,  “In my opinion, fifties morphed into the sixties with the continuation of the Harry Winston look of platinum and diamond wirework jewelry — diamond bracelets and necklaces.” Canary diamonds, he adds, were popular.

Macklowe points out that “diamonds were set in yellow gold much more in the sixties than was ever done previously. You see it set with lots of marquise and pear-shaped diamonds around it in platinum, as well. I think those are the two things.” It was the time, Levy notes, of “free-flowing, big diamonds.”

A Variety of Looks
The sixties saw fun animal jewelry, says Macklowe, “in bracelets and brooches, often very oversized, sometimes with really good enameling. In particular, the Italian enamel pieces are quite good.”

Brooches were still a big part of women’s wardrobes, explains Falvo. “Women wore suits, so they wore brooches.”

One area of sixties jewelry, Macklowe says, that“was different from anything that came before are the sautoires. In the Edwardian period, you have really fine seed pearls and platinum and diamond sautoires, very ladylike and very petite and long and very slender. In the sixties, you get these big, chunky gold ones, with gigantic medallions at the bottom, done by Van Cleef and Cartier and Webb and everyone who really got into fashion.”

Cocktail rings of that decade, Falvo points out, have a modern appeal. “The last two engagement rings I did were sixties cocktail rings. One was a pierced parasol of diamonds with a paler, round sapphire in the center. The other was also sapphire, a cluster of pale and darker sapphires and diamonds.”
 
Sixties looks, sums up Falvo, “appeal across the age groups. These are very wearable things. Women can give them to their daughters.” Macklowe is finding that the sixties and seventies jewelry “is very popular, that sort of big, bold look. And gold has been very popular for us — relatively unadorned gold, 1940s through ’60s, has been very popular for us in the past year.” Levy cites the “fun, happy” appeal.

Article from the Rapaport Magazine - December 2009. To subscribe click here.