Plastics

Antique plastic jewellery is popular with collectors and friends of especially colourful and fanciful jewellery. The general term ‘bakelite’ is often used when plastic jewellery is concerned. Thus, the material bakelite is not only meant, which was patented by the Belgium chemist Dr Leo Hendrik Baekeland in 1907. Moreover, it also refers to the material celluloid, which was popular before bakelite already in the 1890s. Celluloid could be dyed just as horn, which suited jewellery designers to various expression possibilities.

Bakelite was dyed with vibrant colours and, besides, was suitable for engraving. For the jewellery designers of the Art déco it was virtually an ideal material! Following the Art déco, so from the 1950s, the jewellery craft turned away from bakelite towards the transparent plastic ‚lucite‘. Lucite was invented in 1937 and also used with priority in France.