Lucite jewellery is the body of mostly American costume jewellery produced in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s using polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), the transparent thermoplastic developed in the 1930s and trademarked by E. I. du Pont de Nemours under the name Lucite. The material's water-clear transparency, its receptiveness to embedded objects, and its low cost relative to glass and natural materials made it a defining medium of post-war fashion accessories, with major manufacturers including Coro, Trifari, Hattie Carnegie, Castlecliff, Joseff of Hollywood, Miriam Haskell, and a number of smaller workshops in New York and Providence.

Material and origins

Polymethyl methacrylate was developed independently in the early 1930s by chemists in Germany (Otto Röhm), the United Kingdom (Imperial Chemical Industries, who marketed it as Perspex), and the United States (DuPont, who marketed it as Lucite). During the Second World War, large volumes of the material were produced for aircraft canopies and gun-turret glazing, and offcuts and surplus stock entered the costume jewellery trade through the same channels that had supplied earlier celluloid and Bakelite work. The clear, glass-like quality of Lucite, and its ability to hold embedded objects in optical isolation, distinguished it from the opaque phenolic resins that had dominated the 1930s.

Techniques and forms

Costume jewellers used Lucite in several characteristic ways. Carved and back-painted brooches and bangles took advantage of the optical depth of clear acrylic: a floral or fruit motif carved into the reverse and painted with a metallic backing showed forward through the body of the piece, producing a jewel-like internal glow. Reverse-carved aquarium brooches by Trifari and others embedded fish, flowers, and figural elements within bangles and pendants. Confetti Lucite embedded glitter, sequins, and small inclusions in clear bangles. Moonglow Lucite, internally translucent with pearlescent additives, mimicked moonstone in beads and cabochons. By the 1950s Coro's Jelly Belly brooches, which set a clear Lucite cabochon as the body of a stylised animal in pavé-set rhinestone metalwork, had become widely collected.

Designers and houses

The designer most closely associated with Lucite costume jewellery is Adolph Katz at Coro, whose Jelly Belly series ran through the 1940s in poodles, frogs, owls, and sailfish. Trifari, under chief designer Alfred Philippe, produced both Jelly Belly variants and ranks of carved and embedded bangles. Hattie Carnegie used Lucite for cocktail-style necklaces and large brooches in the 1950s. Hobé and Castlecliff produced figural pieces in Lucite combined with rhinestone and metal. Miriam Haskell occasionally incorporated Lucite beads into her predominantly natural-material designs. By the 1960s, Kenneth Jay Lane brought Lucite into a more graphic, modernist idiom, with bold geometric bangles and earrings often combined with tortoise-shell-effect colouration.

Lucite handbags as parallel object

Although outside the strict definition of jewellery, Lucite handbags by Wilardy, Llewellyn, Patricia of Miami, Charles S. Kahn, and Florida Handbags formed a closely related category. Often built as boxes with carved and decorated lids, with metal hardware and silk lining, these bags shared the same material vocabulary and the same embedded-element technique. Pieces by these makers are now collected and shown in costume-jewellery exhibitions alongside contemporaneous brooches and bangles.

Decline and revival

By the late 1960s the rise of cheap polystyrene and the cultural shift away from formal cocktail dressing diminished the Lucite jewellery market. The material did not disappear, however, returning periodically through high-fashion collections (notably Miuccia Prada's transparent acrylic pieces of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Marni's resin work, and Alexis Bittar's signature carved Lucite bangles since 1990). Bittar, who began carving Lucite by hand in his New York studio in the 1980s, is widely credited with re-establishing the medium as a legitimate fine-costume material rather than a vintage curiosity.

Collecting

Lucite costume jewellery is now a substantial collecting category, with major auction-house sales and private dealers specialising in mid-twentieth-century material. Condition is critical: Lucite is susceptible to crazing, internal cloudiness from solvent exposure, and surface scratching, and pieces with intact carved-and-painted reverses or fully clear embedded confetti command significant premiums. The Jelly Belly brooches in particular trade in the low to mid four figures for the most sought-after Coro and Trifari examples, with rare figures (the rabbit, the owl, the polar bear) reaching higher levels.