Ane Antrin Guide to Era Groupings

The Vibe

A century defined by stark social contrasts and a hunger for the world. The Georgian period (1714–1837) spanned the elegant Regency era of Jane Austen's novels and the Grand Tour, where wealthy travellers returned from Italy and Greece with a fascination for newly excavated Egyptian and Etruscan ruins. The long reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901) brought grand balls alongside the grit of rapid industrialisation, and the reach of the British Empire meant that gemstones, materials, and design influences travelled the world in both directions — Indian diamonds and sapphires, Australian gold, and South African stones all found their way into the European workshop, whilst Victorian aesthetic sensibilities spread into the furthest corners of global trade. Society was governed by an elaborate set of codes — dress, behaviour, and adornment were all legible signs of status, morality, and personal circumstance, read instantly by anyone who knew the language.

The Jewels

The craft of this age was full of contradictions. Delicate hand-wrought gold sat alongside the silent language of secret acrostic messages, where gemstones spelled words like REGARD: Ruby, Emerald, Garnet, Amethyst, Ruby, Diamond. Regency pieces were designed specifically for candlelight — foil-backed stones, seed pearls, and intricate filigree all chosen to catch and reflect the warm, flickering light of ballrooms and drawing rooms. The Grand Tour sparked an obsession with fine cameos, gold-wire Etruscan revival styles, and Italian micro-mosaics, whilst the long-established Spanish trade in Colombian emeralds kept vibrant colour central to the European palette.

By the late 1800s, fascination shifted toward the heavens and the natural world, producing the Celestial aesthetic where crescent moons, stars, and sunbursts served as symbols of spiritual guidance alongside highly detailed botanical motifs. Beyond sentiment, jewellery often acted as spiritual armour; talismans of coral, turquoise, and Evil Eye motifs were worn as protective amulets to ward off misfortune. While the engagement ring tradition was cemented after Prince Albert presented Victoria with a serpent ring set with her birthstone—an emerald—the era remained one of vibrant colour. For those in mourning, Victoria’s widowhood made Whitby jet the ultimate standard of grief, though its popularity led to a wide array of alternative materials like "French jet" glass, vulcanite, and carved bog oak, allowing the visual language of remembrance to be expressed across all social levels. For men, this was the age of the Dandy, where ornamental fobs and heavy watch chains were as carefully considered as the signet ring.

Keepers of the Past

Aristocrats navigating strict court hierarchies, the newly wealthy industrial middle class, and the Dandies of the Regency era. Jewellery was worn as an intimate marker for life's passages — birth, marriage, and the rituals of grief — crafted to communicate in an unspoken language of symbolism and sentiment.

The Vibe

The Belle Époque — Beautiful Era — was a period that knew how to present itself. Beneath the gilded surface of Parisian salons and Edwardian drawing rooms, though, the world was quietly fracturing. Industrialisation had produced enormous wealth for some and grinding poverty for many, and that tension was beginning to find its voice. The suffragette movement was gathering force across Britain and Europe, the New Woman was pushing at the boundaries of what a respectable life could look like, and the early rumblings of modernism in art and literature suggested that the old order was not as permanent as it appeared. Electric light was transforming social life in ways that went beyond mere convenience — evenings extended, public spaces multiplied, and for the first time people were dressing and adorning themselves under a light that showed colour and surface quite differently than the candlelit world before it. Japonisme — the European fascination with Japanese art and design — had been reshaping visual culture since the mid-19th century, and the Arts and Crafts movement was mounting a deliberate philosophical challenge to factory-made uniformity.

The Jewels

This era saw two distinct paths: the formal elegance of the Edwardian court and the organic rebellion of Art Nouveau. The technical leap of the period was the use of platinum; its immense strength allowed Edwardian jewellers to spin near-impossible webs of filigree that looked like lace, creating the "White-on-White" diamond aesthetic. Simultaneously, Art Nouveau jewellers rejected these rigid hierarchies, favouring sinuous, nature-inspired forms — dragonflies, maidens, and wisteria — often rendered in translucent plique-à-jour enamel or non-traditional materials. European workshops also drew heavily on Japanese aesthetics, producing designs featuring chrysanthemums and bamboo rendered in guilloché enamel — a technique that brought translucent, layered colour to imperial Russian metalwork with exceptional refinement. For men, the focus shifted to refined details: 18ct gold cufflinks, elegant tie pins, and slim dress watches became the mark of a gentleman.

Keepers of the Past

Parisian salon hostesses, Edwardian socialites at the opera, and aesthetic devotees who saw themselves as patrons of a more artistic, less industrial way of life. This era also belonged to the New Woman — the early feminists and suffragettes who adopted specific colours (purple, white, and green) in their jewellery to signal their cause.

The Vibe

The age of the skyscraper and global upheaval. The Jazz Age was more than an American moment — its energy radiated outward from Chicago and New York to London's West End, the clubs of Paris, and beyond, carried by the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement of extraordinary force. African American artists, musicians, and writers didn't just reshape their own culture; they rewrote the visual and intellectual language of the entire era, and their influence was felt as keenly in Montmartre as it was in Manhattan. The discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922 sparked an Egyptian Revival craze that swept through fashion and design simultaneously across continents. Culture then shifted from the liberated Flapper energy of the twenties to something more sober — but the defiance that followed the Second World War was its own kind of declaration, and it showed in how people dressed.

The Jewels

Architectural ambitions were reflected in geometric shapes and sharp angles. The Egyptian Revival brought scarab motifs and bold colour combinations in lapis lazuli and carnelian. Indian influences inspired the carved, colourful Tutti Frutti style, drawing on Mughal jewellery traditions to produce something vivid and entirely new to Western eyes. The marquise cut — originally shaped in the 18th century to echo the lips of the Marquise de Pompadour — found new life alongside sleek tapered baguettes, and emeralds became the stone of the era, set in bold, stepped designs that suited the period's taste for drama and precision in equal measure.

Electric light, now fully embedded in modern life, changed what jewellery needed to do — stones were cut for brilliance and clarity rather than candlelit warmth, and diamonds came into their own under its unforgiving brightness in a way they never quite had before. In the 1940s, wartime platinum rationing forced a shift back to yellow and rose gold, creating the chunky tank designs and the defiant, oversized cocktail ring — a symbol of post-war celebration and feminine independence. Men's jewellery became sleeker and more machine-like, with geometric cufflinks and sturdy, flat-topped rings reflecting the industrial mood.

Keepers of the Past

Rule-breaking Flappers in jazz clubs, silver-screen starlets, and the poets and performers of the Harlem Renaissance. 1940s war brides and the new generation of professional Career Girls who began the trend of buying fine jewellery for themselves rather than waiting for a gift.

The Vibe

A shift from the cinematic Golden Age glamour of the 1950s to the Civil Rights movement and the Flower Child 1960s. The post-war consumer boom brought a particular kind of optimism to everyday life in the West — television became a fixture in homes, suburban living expanded, and for the first time prosperity felt like something ordinary people could reasonably expect. Then the 1960s arrived and unsettled everything. The Space Race captured the global imagination whilst decolonisation movements across Africa and Asia fundamentally challenged the old world order, with newly independent nations asserting their cultural identity and sending ripples through global art, fashion, and design. The Civil Rights movement in America reverberated internationally, part of a broader worldwide reckoning with equality and self-determination that defined the decade's latter half.

The Jewels

Early Mid-Century pieces focused on texture — bark-finish gold, sculptural forms, and classic pearls that reflected post-war optimism. As the 1960s took hold, the Space Race sparked atomic and starburst designs with radiating spikes. This period favoured organic, molten gold textures alongside a growing interest in Brutalist-inspired work — raw, deliberately unpolished pieces that prioritised sculptural presence over conventional prettiness. The clean, organic silverwork coming out of Scandinavia was enormously influential here, its restrained modernism providing a counterpoint to the more exuberant American and British design of the same years.

The era also drew heavily from Mexican Modernism, with bold architectural silver pieces from Taxco helping to define the wearable art movement that gave studio jewellery its first real cultural moment. Men's jewellery became far more expressive in this period — whilst the signet remained, bold gold chains and textured statement rings entered the picture, and the boundary between men's and women's adornment began to soften. The counterculture's influence on dress extended to jewellery, with beads, pendants, and natural materials worn without much regard for gendered convention.

Keepers of the Past

Modernist suburban hostesses, London shop girls in miniskirts, bohemian artists, and civil rights activists. This era also belonged to the Mid-Century Man — the professional who wanted his accessories to look as modern as the sleek cars and architecture of the day — and to the first generation for whom jewellery had no fixed gender.

The Vibe

Twenty years that moved faster than anyone could keep up with. The 1970s opened on the tail end of the counterculture — politically charged, expressive, and deeply interested in what it meant to be yourself. Disco turned that energy into something euphoric; punk, arriving almost simultaneously, turned it into something combustible. Then rap rewrote the language entirely, carrying with it a new set of values, references, and a wholly different idea of what luxury meant. By the 1980s the mood had shifted again — sharper, more competitive, drenched in ambition. Designer labels became shorthand for arrival. MTV launched in 1981 and for the first time made image as important as sound. The personal computer began appearing in living rooms, quietly announcing that the world was about to change in ways nobody had quite worked out yet.

The Jewels

This era made jewellery loud on purpose. Heavy gold chains, door-knocker earrings, and wide sculptural cuffs announced the wearer before they'd said a word — and that was entirely the point. As gold prices surged through the 1970s and into the 1980s, wearing it boldly carried real weight. For hip-hop and rap culture in particular, gold chains were something closer to ceremonial — visible proof of hard-won success worn as cultural currency and identity. The self-purchase movement, which had taken root alongside Women's Liberation, became genuinely mainstream here; buying fine jewellery for yourself was no longer a quiet act of independence, it was simply what you did.

The broader bohemian current running through the decade drew on turquoise and silver traditions from the American Southwest. Punk brought hardware aesthetics into adornment — deliberately rough, anti-precious, confrontational — whilst New Wave and the New Romantics went theatrical, layering historical references with a knowing sense of drama. Power dressing produced its own kind of armour — architectural gold bangles and sculptural earrings worn into the meeting room as deliberately as a suit. The personal talisman surged across all of it: zodiac pendants, protective symbols, and meaningful charms worn as private anchors against a decade of very public noise.

Keepers of the Past

Disco devotees, newly financially independent women, punk rebels, hip-hop and rap pioneers and their fans, New Wave and the New Romantics, the power-suited professionals of the 1980s boardroom, and the men who wore jewellery on their own terms for the first time — whether that meant a gold rope chain or a string of pearls over a ruffled shirt.

The Vibe

The 1990s opened with a deliberate exhale — grunge, minimalism, and a studied indifference to the excess of the decade before. Looking too polished was almost a social misstep. By mid-decade though, the supermodel era had turned fashion into genuine global spectacle, and celebrity culture was quietly gathering pace underneath the cool surface. The turn of the millennium carried its own charged energy — the Y2K moment was equal parts anxiety and celebration, and that intensity fed directly into the maximalism that followed. The early 2000s dropped the pretence entirely — visible luxury became the point rather than something to understate, and the red carpet transformed into theatre.

Then, almost imperceptibly, the mood shifted again. The internet and the mobile phone put the world in everyone's pocket, and with it came something unexpected — a growing desire for the personal, the singular, and the considered over the mass-produced and the immediately recognisable.

The Jewels

The 1990s opened with a decisive turn away from gold. Silver became the metal of the moment — chunky hoops, wide cuff bracelets, ID-style chains and the tattoo choker worn with the studied nonchalance the decade demanded. For fine jewellery, platinum and the clean solitaire diamond set the tone: confident, spare, and utterly unshowy. Then the early 2000s arrived and the mood inverted entirely. Visible branding became the point — logo pendants, heart tag necklaces, and charm bracelets built piece by piece as a kind of wearable autobiography. Cocktail rings grew theatrical; layering became a language.

Men's jewellery found its own distinct voice here — dog tag necklaces, leather cord bracelets, and a quiet revival of the signet among younger wearers signalled that adornment was no longer something men needed to justify. The gender-neutral thread that had been building since the late 1960s became, in this period, simply unremarkable. By the mid-2000s something quieter was beginning to surface across the board: initial pendants and pieces chosen for private meaning rather than public recognition signalled a growing appetite for the personal over the performative.

Keepers of the Past

Grunge kids, ravers, Britpop devotees, It Girls, Y2K devotees, boho-chic wanderers, red carpet obsessives, and men who had stopped thinking of jewellery as anyone's territory but their own.