What is Costume Jewelry

Characteristics of Costume Jewelry :

This type of jewelry is made with base metals that are gold or silver plated and is normally set with glass gemstones or crystals.

To understand what costume jewelry is you must understand what it is not. First, a mini-tutorial on jewelry - there are three species of jewelry: fine, bridge and costume.

Fine Jewelry - is made with precious metals such as karated gold and platinum. If set with gemstones usually only the precious gemstones ruby, sapphire, emerald or diamond will qualify to be designated as 'fine'.

Cartier comes to mind as one quite famous classic fine jewelry designer.

Bridge Jewelry - The name is quite descriptive. This type of jewelry is made of precious metals also - usually sterling silver. The gemstones used are semi-precious such as aquamarine, garnet, citrine, amethyst - the list goes on and on. Basically any gemstone that is not one of the ones listed under fine is considered to be semi-precious.

Just a word here on the quality of gemstones. A poorly cut, bad specimen of Ruby can be worth much less than a excellent specimen of say, Topaz or Opal. So while ruby, emerald and sapphire are the three precious colored gemstones, joined by diamond, it does not always follow that jewelry set with these gemstones is 'fine'.

Normally a jeweler will not waste the money to use karated gold to set an inferior precious gemstone but it does happen.

Bridge jewelry is so named because it is the 'bridge' between fine jewelry and costume jewelry.
Costume Jewelry - This type of jewelry is made with base metals that are gold, rhodium or silver plated and is normally set with faceted glass stones such as rhinestones or crystals such as the brand name Swarovski. This term to describe nonprecious jewelry came into wide use in the 1930's when coined by movie producer Cecil B. DeMille.

Some of the many costume jewelry terms and types are cloisonne (enamel divided by sections of metal) diamante (set with rhinestones) and jewelry made from paper-mache or Bakelite.

Based upon the fact that costume jewelry is not made from precious metals or precious or semi-precious gemstones it might be thought that it is inexpensive. This is not necessarily true. Collectors of vintage costume jewelry have paid up to $5,000 and more for a piece of jewelry.
For example, Bakelite jewelry is incredibly rare and in the world of vintage costume jewelry collecting very popular. A high quality piece of Bakelite jewelry in excellent condition can fetch a price in the thousands.

Of course, there are many contemporary designers of costume jewelry such as Kenneth Jay Lane, Napier and Monet designing necklaces, earrings and bracelets that are reasonably priced and sold at large chain department stores.