Aurora Borealis Jewelry - How Old is it?

Aurora borealis rhinestones and beads are a favorite of vintage jewelry designers.  They are full of sparkle and fire and add a real touch of class to any vintage jewelry design.

Just like the Northern Lights in nature, AB stones sparkle and have a myriad of stone coatings to give us this nature in jewelry look.

There are a lot of jewelry sellers, particularly on ebay who will try to convince you that the piece of aurora borealis jewelry they are selling is from the Victorian, or Edwardian, or even Art Deco period. Don't be fooled. It isn't.  The actual time frame for these stones is much later.

In the early to mid 1950s, the Swarovski Company began experimenting to give a lustrous aurora borealis coating on crystals to make them more radiant. The process was meant to simulate the effect of the Northern Lights, or the celestial Aurora Borealis. By 1955, the process was perfected by Swarovski, who also worked closely with Christian Dior in the design of jewelry with these stones,

The first aurora borealis jewelry designs were  available to the very wealthy, but the process was soon licensed for use by other manufactures, such as Corocraft and Lisner, who used it in many of their designs. Later, when plastic beads with this finish became the vogue, the jewelry became cheaper and more affordable by the general public.

You are in for a treat when you examine a rhinestone or glass bead which has this coating. You will see shimmering colors radiating from the beads in a variety of shades. Early colors had mainly a bluish coating, but over the years more and more variations in the coating color was perfected and the stones now have a wide variety of colors available. Jerry Smith from Beads and JSBeads.com has a wonderful chart of Aurora Borealis coating colors on his site.


The use of Aurora Borealis stones and beads in jewelry was very popular until the mid 1960s, when it tended to fade from the manufacture of jewelry, only to have a huge resurgence in later years of the last century when vintage jewelry collecting started to become so popular.
So, when you find a piece of jewelry with original aurora borealis stones, don't be fooled into believing that it dates from the 1930s or 1940s. Occasionally, you may find a patent number on the back of a piece which will specifically date it, but the patent will never indicate a piece earlier than 1955 unless the stones have been replaced. Vintage Jewelry Mall has a lovely range of Aurora Borealis jewelry for sale in all price ranges.