Product Description

The much anticipated sequel to Collecting Costume Jewelry 101 is finally here! Collecting Costume Jewelry 202 will take students through another phase of jewelry collecting - the basics of dating jewelry, 1935 - 1980. This beautiful and informative volume simplifies the complex process of dating vintage costume jewelry into six easy-to-understand methods. Over 650 colorful photographs of vintage jewelry illustrate these methods. Beginning and experienced collectors will appreciate the large reference section featuring dozens of well-researched charts cataloging over 4000 design patent numbers and over 550 carefully chosen original patent illustrations. More than 160 intriguing and attractive vintage advertisements are scattered throughout the text. To round out this valuable reference, several useful appendices archive pertinent data needed to date costume jewelry designs in a clear, easy-to-reference format.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #51366 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Customer Reviews

Second time around
Nice photography throughout, clear and concise writing, super job by all on a second volume follow up.

A guide to dating costume jewellery
In "Collecting Costume Jewelry 101", Julia Carroll provided a guide to the main makers of (American) designer costume jewellery, which would allow a beginner to get some idea of what is on offer before going out into the market. In the sequel to this book, "Costume Jewelry 202", Carroll starts by assuming that her readers have already started their costume jewellery collections and then proceeds to give advice on how to date this jewellery.

According to Carroll, there are six main methods of dating costume jewellery: using the maker's mark; using patent information; by reviewing vintage advertisements; by the style or design of the piece; by using books and the internet; and by provenance. Carroll then provides as much of this information as possible to her readers to allow them to date their own jewellery using these methods. For each of the major designers whom Carroll has selected (and there are a lot of them), she provides tables of patent numbers and descriptions, pictures of vintage advertisements, tables of maker's marks and information on style. Much of this information I have not seen in any other book. Extra space is devoted to Coro, Vendome and Trifari jewellery. Readers of "Costume Jewelry 101" will recall that in this book Carroll recommended that beginners start by collecting jewellery by Coro, Kramer, Trifari and Weiss, so this is somewhat consistent with that. Although, I feel that she should have also devoted extra space to Kramer and Weiss jewellery to be fully consistent.

As with the previous book, this book is filled with numerous colour photographs of the jewellery, with 2007 values given for each piece. Please note that this book focuses on dating costume jewellery produced between 1935 and 1980, so if you are interested in dating jewellery that is either earlier or later that this, this book may prove inadequate.

Best of it's kind for the layman
This was a wonderfully informative book with information that dozens of other books on this subject do not cover.