Antique and Vintage Amethyst Jewelry

Amethyst is easily the most popular type of crystalline quartz in fine jewelry. One of the planet’s most ubiquitous minerals, quartz is also the source of citrine. For thousands of years, purple amethysts have been fashioned into everything from beads to amulets. In the 19th century, Victorian Era jewelers set amethysts into their necklaces, earrings, and brooches. By the 1930s, the stones had become the go-to gems in Art Deco jewelry. Egyptian jewelers working almost 4,000 years ago treated amethysts like lots of other pretty stones, which is to say, they drilled holes in them and turned them into beads. Of the necklaces from this period that have survived to the present day, some are made from amethyst beads that have been carved into double-pyramid shapes, their openings capped with gold foil. By the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, the Greeks were getting their amethysts from Egypt, while the Romans who overran Great Britain half a millennium later thought well enough of amethysts to make them the primary gemstones when placed in settings alongside garnets and emeralds. Similarly, when Byzantine goldsmiths produced intricately detailed pendants, which they pierced, embossed, chased, and ringed with seed pearls, amethysts would often be placed at their centers. By the Middle Ages, European jewelers were using amethysts in rings as well as in religious jewelry, sometimes paired with rubies. Amethysts were also used in groups, as in the pendants from the 1600s that were found in the early 20th century in London. Known as the Cheapside Hoard, the collection includes several pendants composed of clusters of teardrop amethysts, as well as one pendant whose clusters of amethysts were carved to resemble actual clusters of grapes. Amethysts were decorated in other ways, too. For example, in the 17th century, amethysts would be carved into signet rings, while in the Victorian Era, the table, or flat face, of amethysts would be incised and then filled with gold. Amethysts were also important to Victorian jewelers because of their role in acrostic rings, in which the first letters of the names of gemstones would be arranged to spell our words like DEAREST (diamond, emerald, amethyst, ruby, emerald, sapphire, topaz). In other pieces such as brooches, a large faceted amethyst would be surrounded by an oval of smaller amethysts. In fact, during the Victorian Era, there were few personal accessories and pieces of jewelry that were not decorated with amethysts. Brass watch fobs were set with rectangular amethysts, while earrings lent themselves to pear-shaped stones, often surrounded by diamonds. Similarly, during Art Nouveau and the Edwardian period, amethysts surrounded by gold foliate scrolls were quite popular. During the Art Deco era, amethysts were sometimes paired with purple glass and rhinestones. Modernist jewelers of the 1950s such as Art Smith also made use of amethysts, pairing them with sodalite and turquoise stones set amid space-age swirls of sterling silver. Also popular in the postwar period were amethyst pins, brooches, and cuff bracelets produced by Mexican silversmiths working out of Taxco.