1930s Austrian Jeweled Clip Earrings
Imagine Vienna in the 1930s.
Evening light.
A beautifully cut dress.
Hair swept away from the face.
And at the ear, an improbable little explosion of emerald green, ruby red and sapphire blue.
Almost a century later, the colour has lost none of its audacity.
These remarkable Austrian earrings belong to that wonderful period when jewellery was becoming increasingly expressive, theatrical and modern - and when colour itself could be the luxury.
But look closely.
Because these are not simply colourful vintage earrings.
They are tiny compositions.
At the centre of each sits an extraordinary domed emerald-green cabochon: luminous, almost jewel-like in its depth. Around it, vivid ruby-red marquise stones flare outward like leaves, punctuated by brilliant blue and green rhinestones.
And then comes the gold-tone metalwork.
Rather than merely holding the stones, it becomes part of the ornament - curling upward into wonderfully elaborate scrolls, foliage and almost fleur-de-lis-like forms.
There is symmetry.
There is abundance.
And yet at approximately 3 cm high × 2.5 cm wide, they remain beautifully wearable.
They don't overwhelm the woman.
They illuminate her.
 
THE CARTIER CONNECTION
There is something unmistakably familiar about this riot of colour.
Emerald green. Ruby red. Sapphire blue. Cabochons juxtaposed against faceted stones. Botanical forms. An almost decadent disregard for conventional colour restraint.
It immediately recalls one of the twentieth century's great jewellery languages:
Cartier's Tutti Frutti.
The celebrated style grew from Cartier's encounters with Indian jewellery and the extraordinary carved emeralds, rubies and sapphires that entered its designs during the early twentieth century. The resulting jewels combined intense colour with botanical forms in a way that felt both exotic and startlingly modern.
Cartier became particularly associated with these Indian-influenced compositions, later known as Tutti Frutti. The house itself traces Jacques Cartier's journey to India to 1911, while the Victoria and Albert Museum notes the broader influence of Indian jewellery on European jewellery design.
These Austrian earrings are not Cartier, of course.
And that distinction is important.
What makes them fascinating is that they capture something of the same extraordinary decorative mood.
The same fearlessness with colour.
The same love of abundance.
The same idea that jewels need not whisper.
They are a wonderful surviving expression of the period's appetite for brilliantly coloured costume jewellery.
 
AND THEN YOU TURN THEM OVER.
There it is.
MADE IN AUSTRIA.
Two little words that transform them from beautiful objects into objects with a geographical history.
Austria - and particularly Vienna - possessed an important tradition of decorative arts and jewellery making. By the opening decades of the twentieth century, Viennese design had already produced some of Europe's most radical approaches to ornament through the Wiener Werkstätte and the wider Viennese modernist movement.
 
These earrings belong to a later, more flamboyant decorative world.
But they carry that wonderful European instinct for ornament.
The moulded gold-tone setting is elaborate even where most people will never look. The stones are individually set. The clip fittings remain wonderfully evocative of their period.
 
They weren't designed to disappear.
They were designed to be noticed.
 
IMAGINE WEARING THEM NOW.
This is perhaps where vintage jewellery becomes most exciting.
Don't dress them as though it were still 1935.
Put them against black.
A beautifully cut black dress. Hair pulled into a low bun. Bare neck. No necklace.
And then these.
Suddenly that emerald green becomes almost electric.
Or wear them against ivory silk - cream blouse, softly swept hair, perhaps nothing more than a slim gold bracelet.
With deep burgundy, the green becomes richer.
With emerald velvet, the ruby stones ignite.
With a crisp white shirt and jeans, something even more interesting happens: an almost century-old Austrian jewel suddenly looks completely contemporary.
And because they are clip-ons, there is no piercing required.
You simply put them on.
 
AND WAIT FOR SOMEONE TO NOTICE.
Because somebody will.
From across a room, they'll see the colour first.
Then they'll come closer.
"Those earrings are extraordinary."
And this is where owning vintage becomes rather different from simply owning jewellery.
You get to answer:
“They're Austrian. From the 1930s.”
And suddenly the conversation changes.
Because the earrings they thought were merely beautiful have already lived almost an entire century before arriving at that dinner table.
That is the quiet privilege of wearing something old.
You don't begin its story.
You continue it.
 
COSTUME JEWELLERY. COLLECTOR'S JEWELLERY.
There is an outdated idea that jewellery becomes important only when its stones are precious.
Pieces like these rather wonderfully challenge it.
Their value lies somewhere else.
In design.
In survival.
In colour.
In their Austrian origin.
In their unmistakable period character.
And perhaps most importantly, in the fact that the pair has remained together.
Nearly a century of dressing tables, jewellery boxes, wardrobes, houses and owners - and today there are still two.
Still matching.
Still wearable.
Still gloriously colourful.
That is what the collector is acquiring.
Not simply two earrings.
A surviving pair.
 
THE DETAILS
1930s Austrian Jeweled Clip Earrings
Marked MADE IN AUSTRIA
Tutti Frutti–inspired polychrome design
Gold-tone metal
Large domed emerald-green glass cabochons
Ruby-red marquise-cut glass stones
Blue and green faceted rhinestone accents
Ornate scrolling and foliate metalwork
Original-style clip-on fittings
Approx. 3 cm high × 2.5 cm wide
No piercing required
Approaching a century old
Excellent condition
As with all antique and vintage jewellery, gentle evidence of age is part of the history and character of the piece.
 
LONDON VINTAGE COLLECTOR'S NOTE
There is jewellery that coordinates with an outfit.
And there is jewellery around which you build the outfit.
These belong firmly to the latter.
Vienna, circa 1930s.
A riot of colour.
Almost a century later, still impossible to ignore.