Built to be worn.

Midcentury jewelry didn't always borrow from architecture so much as start behaving like it. Silver became structure, open space became part of the design, and a brooch could be built from the same vocabulary of curves, voids and soaring forms that architects were exploring at a much larger scale. In jewelry, the building didn't have to stand up. It only had to hold together.

This one barely bothers to behave like a brooch. Three tall silver forms climb to different heights, with deep openings cut between them and two hollow cups appearing where you might expect the pattern to continue. From the front, it's easy to forget that all of this has to resolve into a flat little pin on the back. At 2 1/2 inches tall, it manages to look considerably bigger than the amount of silver involved.

Details:

• Date: Circa 1960s–1970s

• Material: Sterling silver

• Design: Abstract architectural Modernist form

• Maker: Unsigned

•  Dimensions: Approximately 2 1/2 in. long

• Weight: 18.20 g

• Condition: Good vintage condition with surface wear and patina consistent with age. Please see photographs for details.

• Styling Notes: Pin it vertically on a black jacket or substantial knit and let the silhouette read at full scale. It would also be excellent on the lapel of an oversized white shirt where all that silver has some room around it.

Please Note: Jewelry box, chains, styling props, and any additional items shown in photos are for display purposes only unless specifically listed as included.

Your piece will arrive carefully packaged in RetroStarr presentation wrapping, ready for gifting, collecting, or immediate wear.

Curated by Dana Sednek, GIA trained jewelry professional and founder of RetroStarr, where each jewel is hand selected for its past lives and future attitude.

Some stories were meant to be kept to yourself.

Victorians were very good at giving sentiment somewhere to hide. Here, it takes the form of a miniature gold book, complete with engraved covers, a tiny working clasp, a hinged spine and edges scored to resemble the pages of a well-loved volume. There is even a blank cartouche waiting on the cover, although after more than a century, leaving it unwritten feels rather perfect.

Open the book and two oval portrait compartments appear beneath convex rock crystal covers, both remarkably still present. Originally made to hold photographs, the little frames turn the locket into something more intimate than ornament: a private album small enough to wear around your neck. The rock crystal has been gemologically tested, and its softly magnifying convex surfaces give the empty compartments almost as much presence as the portraits they once protected.

At approximately 7/8 inch tall, the scale is particularly good for wearing rather than simply collecting. Add it to a watch chain, wear it alone on a fine gold chain, or let it join a charm-heavy neck mess. It has already spent well over a century keeping secrets. What happens next is entirely your business.

Details

• Era: Victorian, circa 1860s–1880s

• Material: Tests as 14K gold 

• Stone: Rock crystal

• Interior: Two oval portrait compartments beneath convex rock crystal covers; both covers remain present

• Design: Miniature book-form locket with engraved decoration, blank cartouche, scored page edges, hinged spine and clasp

• Maker: Unsigned

• Dimensions: Approximately 5/8 x 7/8 in.

• Weight: 6.33 g gross weight, including rock crystal

• Condition: Very good antique condition with age-appropriate surface wear and patina. Both interior rock crystal covers remain present and clear, with surface wear consistent with age. Hinges and clasp are intact. Please review all photographs closely as they form an important part of the condition description.

• Styling Notes: Small enough to layer beautifully, but interesting enough not to need company. Try it on a fine gold chain, antique watch chain or mixed charm necklace, with the book closed until someone earns the rest of the story.

Please Note: Jewelry box, chains, styling props and any additional items shown in photos are for display purposes only unless specifically listed as included.

Your piece will arrive carefully packaged in RetroStarr presentation wrapping, ready for gifting, collecting or immediate wear.

Curated by Dana Sednek, GIA trained jewelry professional and founder of RetroStarr, where each jewel is hand selected for its past lives and future attitude. 

All the trouble is on the inside.

Inside Job keeps her best secrets below the surface. Purple and acid green flash through a dark little maze of metal, appearing, disappearing, and changing places as the angle shifts. Schreiner packed an astonishing amount of drama into two inches, making you lean in to see how it was done.

Schreiner’s Shadow Box construction put the stones at different depths rather than neatly lining them up on the surface. Smooth lilac cabochons, faceted amethyst glass, and sharp shots of green sit inside the dark openwork setting, creating a composition that shifts from every direction.

Details

• Era: Midcentury, circa 1960s

• Origin: New York, USA

• Maker: Schreiner New York

• Collection: Shadow Box

• Material: Glass stones and silver-tone base metal

• Color: Amethyst purple, lavender, acid and olive green

• Size: Approximately 2 inches

• Style: Dimensional Shadow Box brooch

• Hallmarks: SCHREINER NEW YORK

• Condition: Good vintage condition with age-related wear and patina. There is visible localized wear and loss to the black japanned finish, exposing the underlying metal in several areas, particularly along the raised floral and openwork elements. Stones appear secure. 

• Styling Notes: Pin it somewhere the depth can be seen. A black lapel, a high collar, or the shoulder of a simple dress gives all that purple and green plenty of room to work.

Please Note: Jewelry box, chains, styling props, and any additional items shown in photos are for display purposes only unless specifically listed as included.

Your piece will arrive carefully packaged in RetroStarr presentation wrapping, ready for gifting, collecting, or immediate wear.

Curated by Dana Sednek, GIA trained jewelry professional and founder of RetroStarr, where each jewel is hand selected for its past lives and future attitude.

One blue note. Hold it.

Turquoise has a habit of showing up just when the wardrobe gets interesting. Old denim, a white shirt unbuttoned farther than intended; Blue Note belongs in that company. Not so much accessorized, more acquired somewhere along the way. That may be turquoise’s best trick.

The knife-edge shank is the detail worth noticing. By narrowing the band to a crisp ridge, the silversmith gives a petite ring more definition without adding more ornament. It is a small construction choice with an outsized effect, keeping the turquoise visually forward and the silverwork lean. Blue Note may be modest in scale, but the design is anything but incidental.

Details

• Era: Vintage, mid-to-late 20th century, stylistically dated

• Metal: Sterling silver

• Gemstone: Turquoise; specific mine origin unknown

• Ring Size: 7½

• Style: Turquoise and sterling silver ring with knife-edge shank

• Hallmarks: None

• Condition: Very good vintage condition with light surface wear consistent with age and prior use.

• Styling Notes: Blue Note already knows the uniform. Denim, white cotton, sterling silver. Stack it if you like, but leave enough room for the blue to get a word in.

Please Note: Jewelry box, chains, styling props, and any additional items shown in photos are for display purposes only unless specifically listed as included.

Your piece will arrive carefully packaged in RetroStarr presentation wrapping, ready for gifting, collecting, or immediate wear.

Curated by Dana Sednek, GIA trained jewelry professional and founder of RetroStarr, where each jewel is hand selected for its past lives and future attitude.

Look through it.

A single sweep of silver curves around an open center, letting air become part of the composition. In the hands of Mexican modernist silversmith Ysidro García Piña, jewelry became an exercise in reduction: line, movement, surface, space.

Made in García Piña's Maricela workshop in Taxco, this brooch turns that idea into something remarkably simple. A textured sterling border traces the curve while the broad interior is left almost entirely open. The result changes depending on what sits behind it: fabric, skin, shadow, nothing at all.

Details

• Era: Midcentury Modern, c. 1950s–60s
• Maker: Ysidro García Piña, Maricela
• Origin: Taxco, Mexico
• Metal: Sterling silver
• Hallmarks: Maricela, Tasco, Hecho En Mexico, Sterling, Eagle 3
• Design: Sculptural open-form / negative-space brooch
• Condition: Very good vintage condition with light surface wear consistent with age and use. Patina has been intentionally preserved to retain the definition and depth of the original surface work. Pin mechanism functions as intended. 
• Styling Notes: Pin it somewhere the empty space gets to participate.

Please Note: Jewelry box, chains, styling props, and any additional items shown in photos are for display purposes only unless specifically listed as included.

Your piece will arrive carefully packaged in RetroStarr presentation wrapping, ready for gifting, collecting, or immediate wear.

Curated by Dana Sednek, GIA trained jewelry professional and founder of RetroStarr, where each jewel is hand selected for its past lives and future attitude.

Black became modern.

She fastened black onyx at her throat and stepped into a world that was changing around her. Bare arms, shorter hemlines, a drink out, an evening that belonged increasingly to women on their own terms. Against the skin, black and silver felt sharp and new. Jewelry had changed along with everything else.

Look closely and you can see how completely this necklace belonged to that moment. The polished onyx is suspended within remarkably fine sterling filigree, with a tiny colorless glass accent catching the light at its center. Even the journey up to the chain was considered, with an architectural pierced connector continuing the design before meeting the delicate 16-inch chain. 

Details

• Era: Art Deco, c. 1920s–30s
• Metal: Sterling silver
• Hallmarks: AT, Sterling
• Maker: AT, currently unidentified
• Stone: Black onyx with colorless glass accent
• Necklace Length: 16 inches
• Pendant: Approx. 1 1/4 × 3/4 inches
• Condition: Very good antique condition with surface wear consistent with age and use. Clasp functions as intended.
• Styling Notes: Bare skin. Black dress. Somewhere worth going.

Please Note: Jewelry box, chains, styling props, and any additional items shown in photos are for display purposes only unless specifically listed as included.

Your piece will arrive carefully packaged in RetroStarr presentation wrapping, ready for gifting, collecting, or immediate wear.

Curated by Dana Sednek, GIA trained jewelry professional and founder of RetroStarr, where each jewel is hand selected for its past lives and future attitude.

Subtlety had the night off.

Cocktail rings have always understood the assignment: take up space, catch the light, start a conversation. Big Mood carries on that tradition with absolutely no interest in dialing things down.

Deep purple glass flashes from plum to violet to nearly black depending on the light, giving this oversized vintage ring all the drama its name promises. Set simply in sterling silver, it lands somewhere between glamorous and gloriously over-the-top.

Details

• Era: Vintage / Estate
• Metal: Sterling silver
• Hallmarks: Sterling
• Stone: Faceted purple glass
• Cut: Emerald cut
• Ring Size: 5.75
• Weight: 13.42 grams
• Condition: Very good vintage condition with surface wear consistent with age and use.
• Styling Notes: Wear it like it's real. Ideally, on your pointer finger. 

Please Note: Jewelry box, chains, styling props, and any additional items shown in photos are for display purposes only unless specifically listed as included.

Your piece will arrive carefully packaged in RetroStarr presentation wrapping, ready for gifting, collecting, or immediate wear.

Curated by Dana Sednek, GIA trained jewelry professional and founder of RetroStarr, where each jewel is hand selected for its past lives and future attitude.

The building moved to your wrist.

During the years between Art Deco and Mid-Century Modernism, design began shedding ornament and letting structure do the talking. Setback belongs to that fascinating in-between world. Its overlapping brass planes rise and retreat like the stepped profiles of interwar architecture, turning the bracelet into something closer to a miniature construction than conventional jewelry.

The single olive-green Bakelite element makes the whole thing stranger and better. Rather than appearing as applied decoration, it becomes part of the structure itself, joining brass and one of the defining new materials of the machine age in a piece that feels engineered rather than embellished. The maker is unknown. The point of view is not.

Details

• Era: Retro Moderne, c. late 1930s–1940s, stylistically dated
• Material: Brass and tested Bakelite
• Color: Olive green Bakelite
• Maker: Unknown
• Hallmarks: None observed
• Size: Adjustable
• Closure: Chain-and-hook closure with hollow brass ball terminal
• Style: Retro Moderne / Machine Age / architectural jewelry
• Condition: Very good vintage condition with surface wear, oxidation, and developed patina to the brass consistent with age and use. The Bakelite element remains glossy and well preserved. Hardware appears intact and functional.
• Styling Notes: Setback has already done the accessorizing for you. Give it a bare wrist, a rolled cuff, or a sharply tailored sleeve and let the architecture stand alone.

Please Note: Jewelry box, chains, styling props, and any additional items shown in photos are for styling & display purposes only, unless specifically listed as included.

Your piece will arrive carefully packaged in RetroStarr presentation wrapping, ready for gifting, collecting, or immediate wear.

Curated by Dana Sednek, GIA trained jewelry professional and founder of RetroStarr, where each jewel is hand selected for its past lives and future attitude.

Her name was Ruby. We know what she belonged to.

In 1919, this remarkable gold pin belonged to Ruby E. Davis of Stella Rebekah Lodge No. 22. More than a century later, her name, her lodge, and the year are still engraved across the back. We may not know the rest of Ruby's story, but the front tells us something about the community she chose to be part of.

The Rebekahs grew from the Independent Order of Odd Fellows in the nineteenth century, with ideals centered around friendship, love, truth, charity, and mutual aid. Their jewelry carried those ideas in symbols. Ruby's pin gathers them together in miniature: a beehive representing cooperative industry, the dove of peace, and other Rebekah imagery worked into the colorful enameled star. A synthetic ruby glows beneath the articulated dove, all rendered in 14K yellow gold.

This isn't simply a piece of fraternal jewelry. It's a tiny surviving record of identity and belonging. Someone put Ruby's name on it in 1919. More than a hundred years later, we're still saying it.

Details

• Date: 1919
• Organization: Rebekah Lodge, Independent Order of Odd Fellows
• Lodge: Stella Rebekah Lodge No. 22
• Original Owner: Ruby E. Davis, as engraved
• Metal: 14K yellow gold
• Stone: Synthetic ruby
• Enamel: Multicolor enamel
• Design: Articulated dove above a five-pointed symbolic Rebekah star
• Engraving: Ruby E. Davis / Stella Reb / Lodge 22 / 1919, with additional engraving
• Measurements: Approximately 1 1/2 × 1 inch
• Condition: Very good antique condition with surface wear and areas of enamel loss consistent with more than a century of age. Pin mechanism functions as intended.

Please Note: Jewelry box, chains, styling props, and any additional items shown in photos are for display purposes only unless specifically listed as included.

Your piece will arrive carefully packaged in RetroStarr presentation wrapping, ready for gifting, collecting, or immediate wear.

Curated by Dana Sednek, GIA trained jewelry professional and founder of RetroStarr, where each jewel is hand selected for its past lives and future attitude.

The future used to look like this.

There was a moment in the midcentury when everything seemed headed somewhere: satellites, jet travel, new buildings, new materials, new shapes. Even a brooch could look like it was moving.

Trajectory comes straight out of that visual language. Tru-Kay built the piece from sterling silver, then covered its sweeping surface with tiny engraved lines that catch the light as the form changes direction. A polished silver element seems to travel straight through the middle. It is small, strange, optimistic, and unmistakably of its moment.

Signed TK Sterling for Tru-Kay, an American jewelry manufacturer active during the midcentury period.

Details

• Era: Midcentury, approximately 1950s–1960s
• Maker: Tru-Kay
• Country: United States
• Metal: Sterling silver
• Hallmarks: TK, Sterling
• Measurements: Approximately 2 1/4 × 1 1/4 inches
• Weight: 4.93 grams
• Condition: Excellent vintage condition with minimal surface wear consistent with age. Pin mechanism functions as intended. 

Please Note: Jewelry box, chains, styling props, and any additional items shown in photos are for display purposes only unless specifically listed as included.

Your piece will arrive carefully packaged in RetroStarr presentation wrapping, ready for gifting, collecting, or immediate wear.

Curated by Dana Sednek, GIA trained jewelry professional and founder of RetroStarr, where each jewel is hand selected for its past lives and future attitude.

The geometry is older than it looks.

With its sharp radiating points and open geometric construction, Old Salem could easily be mistaken for a particularly exuberant piece of 1980s futurism. Its form, however, reaches much further back.

Hand & Hammer Silversmiths translated the traditional Moravian star into this remarkably graphic piece of jewelry, using pierced sterling silver and gold vermeil to create a dimensional pattern of points, light, and negative space. The company's Moravian Star design, #595, dates to 1984, and Hand & Hammer's own records connect its Moravian Star work to Old Salem, the historic Moravian community in North Carolina. The result is an object that manages to look historic, architectural, and slightly Space Age all at once.

Details

• Era: Vintage; design introduced 1984
• Maker: Hand & Hammer Silversmiths
• Country: United States
• Metal: Sterling silver with gold vermeil
• Hallmarks: H&H, Sterling
• Design: Moravian Star #595
• Measurements: Approximately 1 1/4 inches diameter
• Weight: 2.46 grams
• Condition: Excellent vintage condition with minimal surface wear consistent with age. Vermeil remains bright and well preserved. Please see photographs for details.
• Styling Notes: All those points do the work. Old Salem is small enough to wear easily, but graphic enough to hold its own without anything else competing for attention.

Please Note: Jewelry box, chains, styling props, and any additional items shown in photos are for display purposes only unless specifically listed as included.

Your piece will arrive carefully packaged in RetroStarr presentation wrapping, ready for gifting, collecting, or immediate wear.

Curated by Dana Sednek, GIA trained jewelry professional and founder of RetroStarr, where each jewel is hand selected for its past lives and future attitude.

Somewhere between jewelry and molecular structure.

A cluster of polished sterling silver orbs rises from the hand in Molecule, turning one repeated form into something unexpectedly sculptural. There are no stones, no applied ornament, and very little interest in behaving like a conventional ring. Shape, repetition, reflection, and negative space do all the work.

The ring is signed MR for Mexican silversmith Melesio Rodríguez, whose career included work with Rancho Alegre, Sigi, and, for many years, Margot de Taxco. Its compact constellation of silver spheres feels particularly at home in the experimental language of midcentury Mexican jewelry, where traditional silversmithing increasingly met abstraction and modernist design.

Details

• Era: Midcentury

• Maker: Melesio Rodríguez

• Country: Mexico

• Metal: Sterling silver

• Hallmarks: MR, STERLING, MEXICO, Eagle 3

• Ring Size: Approximately 7; adjustable open double-band construction

• Design: Clustered sterling silver orbs

• Condition: Very good vintage condition with light surface wear and patina consistent with age and use. Adjustable band remains functional.

Styling Notes: Molecule has the scale of an everyday ring and the personality of something much larger. Wear it alone and let the cluster do its strange little atomic thing.

Please Note: Jewelry box, chains, styling props, and any additional items shown in photos are for display purposes only unless specifically listed as included.

Your piece will arrive carefully packaged in RetroStarr presentation wrapping, ready for gifting, collecting, or immediate wear.

Curated by Dana Sednek, GIA trained jewelry professional and founder of RetroStarr, where each jewel is hand selected for its past lives and future attitude.