In the 1920s, jewellery underwent a visual revolution.
What mattered after dark was not simply what a stone was, but what a jewel could do with light.
 
That is the world these earrings came from.
 
Long, dramatically articulated and almost completely covered in hand-set period paste, they were engineered so that light never encounters them at only one angle. The body moves. The three drops move independently. The stones face different directions. With every movement, another surface catches the light.
 
It is why, a century later, you can put them under evening light and understand immediately what their maker was trying to achieve:
the spectacle of diamonds, without needing diamonds to create it.
 
And perhaps that is the most sophisticated thing about them.
 
Because today, anyone with enough money can walk into a jewellery store and buy diamonds.
 
You cannot walk into one and buy 1920s glamour.
 
This pair has already lived through nearly a century and somehow remains together, down to its original fitted case from The Indian Diamond & Pearl Co., 4 St. Ann’s Passage, Manchester.
 
Open that little seasoned wooden & silk box today and you are seeing essentially what somebody saw when it was opened for the first time generations ago.
 
It is jewellery conceived almost as choreography.
 
And this is where the use of period paste becomes fascinating rather than incidental.
 
The great paste jewellery of this era was capable of extraordinary optical theatre. In a jewel such as this, the material allowed the maker to pursue something wonderfully extravagant:
 
light everywhere.
 
A century later, the result still has the extraordinary diamond-like brilliance for which these jewels were created - particularly in evening light, where movement transforms the earrings completely.
But perhaps their greatest luxury today is something that could never have been manufactured when they were new:
their age.
They have survived for approximately a century as a pair. More remarkably still, they remain housed in their original fitted seasoned wooden jeweller's case, its silk interior bearing the name:
The Indian Diamond & Pearl Co. Ltd.
4 St. Ann's Passage
Manchester
 
The retailer is historically documented at this Manchester address, giving the surviving case a tangible connection to the world in which the earrings were originally sold.
 
There is something rather extraordinary about opening it today.
 
The aged silk. The fitted interior. The extraordinarily long earrings lying exactly where they were intended to lie. The retailer's name still printed inside the lid.
 
The jewel and its history have remained together.
 
Diamonds can still be bought.
 
A pair of earrings can still be made.
 
But no jeweller can manufacture the century that separates the first opening of this box from its opening today.
 
That is what makes this pair a collector's piece.
 
Not an approximation of Art Deco.
 
Art Deco itself.
 
Circa 1920s–30s
Period paste set in rhodium plated metal
Approx. 8 cm length × 2 cm maximum width
In brilliant condition. No defect, damage, wear or yellow stones.
Original fitted case from The Indian Diamond & Pearl Co. Ltd., Manchester