2025.1

MAKER: Unknown; unmarked. No maker’s mark or metal/quality stamp is visible. It is costume jewelry; the manufacturer is not identified. DATE / PERIOD: Not marked; undetermined. Multi-strand faceted-glass bead necklaces with rhinestone box clasps were especially popular in the mid-twentieth century (roughly 1940s–1960s), and the form here is consistent with that, but nothing on the object fixes a date. ORIGIN: Such faceted-glass bead necklaces were widely produced (notably in Czechoslovakia, a major glass-bead center).

MATERIALS: Faceted glass beads (amethyst/pink, translucent); base-metal box clasp with silver-tone finish set with colorless glass/paste rhinestones; strung on thread or fine cord. TECHNIQUES: Machine-cut/faceted and polished glass beads, strung in three graduated strands and gathered to a multi-loop commercial box clasp with paste-set ornament; standard costume-jewelry assembly.

Good

This is a piece of mid-century-style costume jewelry: a three-strand necklace of faceted amethyst/pink glass beads finished with a rhinestone-set box clasp. Faceted pressed-and-cut glass beads of this kind were a staple of twentieth-century costume jewelry, produced in large quantities by several glassmaking industries (the Czech/Bohemian bead industry being the best known), but absent a mark this cannot be assigned to a country or maker, and no such attribution should be implied. However, considering Cuba’s strong commercial links to Czechoslovakia after 1959, this is the most probable source.