The Unusual - Juliana Heat Formed Plastic Jewelry

Tortoise Butterfly Pendant

Cream Butterfly Pendant and Earrings

To continue with our "Unusual" topic this week I will be talking about the heat formed plastic pieces that Juliana used in it's jewelry in the early to mid 1970's and talked about in his book in the 1971-1973 chapter.  Mr Delizza states in his book that he found a plastic company that could form plastic in many colors into different shapes. 

Blue with clear rhinestones pin/pendant

They made many variations and colors of these designs.  Notice these two butterflies use the same plastic wing design but both give a very different look with different colors and different metal  designs.

Hot Pink Butterfly Pendant

So far the colors that have been found in these heat formed plastics are mauve, pink, black, cream, red, blue, lime green, yellow and orange.  Most of the designs shown here are found in other colors.  I have tried to show some of the designs and all of the colors (I am missing black but the black is pictured in my book).  There may be other colors out there as yet undiscovered.  Maybe you can be the person to find the next color and design.

Yellow brooch and dangle earrings

Orange Leaf Brooch

You can see with the blue design that they even combined rhinestones with these heat formed plastic pieces.  There are other designs with the heat formed pieces with accenting rhinestones including a great necklace also shown in my book. 

Red Anchor Pendant

Also notice the repeat of the sort of navette shaped pieces.  They are used as earring designs for many of the pieces as well as being used in not only the yellow and orange designs but in many others not shown here.

Another tell tale feature you will often see in these designs is the well known Juliana chain end dangle shaped like a heart.  If you see this heart you know it is a Juliana design. Well unless it is a wandering chain which does happen.  The other time you will find it is in the DEC signed pieces which were Juliana designed but manufactured by a different company.  I will later talk about these DEC signed pieces in another blog post.

Lime Butterfly Pendant

Torqoise Heart Pendant
on a neck ring

The lime green butterfly shown uses those same navette shaped plastic pieces.  This is combined with cast metalwork and a lime green cabochon for accent.  Cabochons with metalwork was another common design element in designs of this time period.

In the heart design shown here you can see something else they did with this heat formed plastic.  They did neck rings out of it.  You will find these in different colors with different pendants on them.

Mauve Plastic and Black
Epoxy Pendant

This last design that combines the heat formed plastic with epoxy paint shows what we will be talking about next week.  This design is talked about in Mr DeLizza's book and he called it the Kaleidoscope look.

The epoxy paint designs were also done in this early to mid 1970's design period.  The range of designs they did with these will amaze you.  The butterflies are especially fabulous and varied in these epoxy designs.

The Unusual - Juliana Wooden Jewelry

Large Wood Owl Pendant

To continue this week on our topic of unusual Juliana Jewelry I will be talking about their wooden jewelry.  Yes you read that correctly!  Juliana Jewelry made not of the blingy rhinestones they are famous for, but made instead out of wood.  Yes they may be wood, but they are still fabulous and quite rare.

Abstract pendant

You will notice that the different designs repeat many of the same shapes as other of the wooden items.   The owl's wings are the same wood as the sides of the cuckoo clock.  The top part of the cuckoo clock has the same curved wood as the abstract pendant.

Pendant Cuckcoo Clock

I his book Mr DeLizza on page 113-114 says and I quote: "I then found some polished wood pieces and gave them to Tony Zangara and he made a great wooden cuckoo clock pendant, an owl pendant and an abstract one."  So these three pendants are the designs Mr DeLizza talked about.  They are talked about in the 1971-1973 section of his book.

Did these surprise you?  Has this opened your eyes to the fact that Juliana was more than just rhinestones and that you don't need rhinestones to have some fabulous jewelry.

I hope so.  Next week we will continue our Unusual topic and talk about the other thing you see in two of these pendants.  Heat formed plastic.  We will talk about all the designs that Juliana did with heat formed plastic in many different colors.

The Unusual - Juliana (D and E) Filigree Backs

Today we will discuss filigree backings.  As a general rule Juliana (D and E) jewelry did not design jewelry with filigree backings like seen in other designers jewelry.  However there are a few exceptions to this rule.

This is an EXTREMELY unusual brooch for D&E.  Most everything about is is unusual.  I suspect it was a design desired by a customer and these unusual elements were the only way to construct it as desired.

Also notice the filigree back on this is not the same filigree as seen on the few D&E pieces that do have filigree.

Here is a necklace I am sure many of you have seen.  This is the well known Sunburst design.  You will notice this design has both a filigree back and a support wire. 

Very usual filigree back earrings.  This filigree back is seen in two different designs of Juliana earrings both are large button earrings with rivoli centers but one has these spear shapes stones and the other has just navettes.

Notice the filigree on the back of the brooch.  My guess is it was done instead of a support ring. 





So to wrap up this training I would like you to think about the fact that yes Juliana (D and E) did use filigree backs but they are extremely rare so while you can not rule something out as Juliana (D and E) due to a filigree back you should be highly suspicious that something is not Juliana (D and E) if you see a filigree back.