In the back of my mind, the words “Northern Lights” triggered a memory when my auction buddy Janet mentioned them in referring to some jewelry she had just bought at auction. Alaska, North Pole, Northern sky.
When she showed me the jewelry and I held it up against the daylight and the white snow outside my porch, the stones on the jewelry began to flicker.
Just lovely, I thought, as I fingered the two- and three-strand necklaces, earrings and two bracelets.
Her new discovery was a type of costume jewelry called aurora borealis or AB. Since I’m not a jewelry person, it was a new name to me. They were faceted beads that resembled rhinestones – which I knew about and loved for their shape and beautiful colors.
Naturally, I researched the jewelry. I found that the beads have an iridescent AB coating that reflected light and color. The coating caused them to shimmer, their brilliance radiating like the colors of the rainbow. They are said to not only reflect the external light but any (colorful) outfit you are wearing.
In Googling, I also found that aurora borealis jewelry – the name just rolls rhythmically off the tongue, doesn’t it? – was very popular in the 1950s (the most collectible is from this period), but fell out of favor in the 1960s. Now, however, interest in it as vintage collectible and wearable jewelry has apparently re-emerged.
Swarovski first experimented with aurora borealis coating on crystals in the 1950s, with a nudge from Christian Dior in the design of some of its jewelry. The jewelry was first purchased primarily by the wealthy, according to the website Vintage Jewelry Lane. It became cheaper and more affordable for everybody else when plastic beads were used and other manufacturers began making it.
The stones – both rhinestones and glass – were fashioned into necklaces, brooches, bracelets, earrings, rings and pins. The pieces I found on the web ranged in prices from a few dollars to hundreds of dollars, but most were affordable. Take a look at these pieces on the Vintage Jewelry site.
The name of one maker kept turning up in my research: Juliana jewelry, which made AB and other costume jewelry for a number of companies. Many of its pieces were not marked, but some were sent with hang tags with the name “Juliana.” This jewelry came from the design house of DeLizza & Elster, which was in business from the 1940s to the 1980s.
DeLizza & Elster has a website that offered a history of the company, and most importantly, a committe that will verify and identify your Juliana jewelry. It’s also a good place to see some of their pieces. Another AB jewelry-maker I came across was B. David. Here are some samples from the blog Rhinestones Past.
The AB stones were meant to capture the colors of a Northern Lights display much like this photo of one I found in Wikipedia over Bear Lake at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska.
