About those 1830s Earrings...

Posted by Taylor Shelby on April 24, 2019

Oh the 1830s! Such excess! Such silliness! Big hair and even bigger sleeves! And oh yes...big jewelry to match.

Quite some time ago I received some vintage teardrops in the mail and they ended up being *much* bigger than I realized. I tucked them away in a drawer thinking I'd never use them and then while doing some research on 1830s jewelry I came across this image:

Miss Major by John Wood Dodge, 1835. Cincinnati Museum of Art.

There are many examples of large-scale earrings in the 1830s, but these in particular had a resemblance to the pieces I had in my possession. I was delighted to find this historical example!

My version of these 1830s Earrings

When I first made them they were so enormous that I laughed out loud! I tried them one and just giggled uncontrollably. In my t-shirt with my hair pulled back in a pony tail they looked as oversized and ridiculous as you could imagine. They were so big that I brought back-up jewelry with me to our Young Victoria Dinner.

But, oddly enough, as soon as I had the whole outfit on they were perfect! It's amazing how enormous sleeves and totally ridiculous and silly hair can balance out something like this!