There is something very special about antique jewellery and that is that for all intents and purposes every piece is unique. The same thing applies to many things which are antique, because they were created in the days before mass production. So a piece of furniture such as an antique chaise longue or a davenport desk in burr walnut would have been a one-off, even though the carpenter may have built several to the same design.
Each would have used different pieces of wood - which are in themselves unique - and so had a different finish, as opposed to something from that company that advertises solid oak furniture on TV. There is nothing wrong with solid oak furniture, but it has all been designed and produced so that it looks exactly the same as the next piece which you can buy from their branch in the next town.
So it is with antique jewellery in Sydney. A piece of antique jewellery is a one-off and you can be certain that nobody has a piece exactly the same as the one that you buy, whereas if you buy a piece of jewellery from one of the big jewellers chains - while it might look excellent - you know that there is another one exactly the same in their other stores because they have been mass-produced.
This brings us to another point and that is that if you are looking for antique jewellery there is no point in going to a chain store because they don't have any. If you think about it, this makes perfect sense. Some of the chains have 200 or 300 branches, and they are not about to let their individual managers start buying pieces of jewellery from people who walk in off the street with them wishing to sell them. All hell would break loose!
The managers could pay wildly over the odds, or then again, they could pay wildly under the odds. Either way, the chains would be in trouble. Even if a manager bought something for far less than it is actually worth, the resultant publicity would do no end of harm. So the chain stores only sell what has been purchased by their central buying departments.
If you want to buy unique pieces of jewellery then you have to go to the independent jewellery stores, or the ones with perhaps two or three branches, where the business owner can make any decisions he wishes to make, or where a trusted assistant of many years' standing may sometimes be allowed to make purchases.
Of course, the majority of antique jewellery purchases are made for gifts, and there is something very special about knowing that you have just received a piece of jewellery that is unique. Nobody else has one the same. It is yours, and yours alone. It is similar to buying someone a picture to hang on the wall. You could by a Picasso print or a Monet or Gauguin, and there would be thousands of others hanging on walls around the world.
However, if you go to your local art gallery you will find oil paintings and water colours that are unique because the artist only ever painted one. Artists are, by nature, creative, so the following week or month he or she no doubt painted something completely different as their next work. In fact, even if the artist copied the painting as nearly as possible it would still be different because the paint was little bit different here or there, the shading varied, he might even have been tired at a certain point, and so on.
Antique jewellery is the same or rather, not the same! If the jeweller who created the piece tried to copy it, he wouldn't be able to get exactly the same stones. He might just copy the overall design, but he wouldn't have been able to reproduce it exactly. So there you have it: if you want a piece of jewellery that is unique, go hunting in the independent jewellers shops where you will find something very different from the run of the mill in the chain stores.
Vintage Times offers Antique Jewellery in Sydney. We are specialises in buying and selling antique and pre-owned jewellery. There is a fabulous selection of pieces that you cannot find anywhere else.