All About Marcasite Jewellery

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Marcasite Jewellery dates back to the ancient Greeks, though it was the Victorians who truly popularised it. Specifically beloved by Queen Victoria herself, it has recently been brought back into fashion by lovers of vintage style jewellery. With its antique appear and soft, gentle gleam, marcasite jewellery has a lovely dull, faded charm, reminiscent of bygone days and faded glamour.

Marcasite jewellery is not in fact produced from the mineral marcasite iteslf, as this is too fragile and tends to crumble when worked. Instead, it is made from modest pieces of pyrite (fool's gold) gemstones set into sterling silver. Less expensive marcasite jewellery will have low excellent pyrite shards just glued onto the silver (some jewellers may well even use stainless steel rather than silver), but this means that the pyrite stones can be quickly dislodged. Greater quality items will have cut stones expertly set into the metal with tiny pins. Depending on how it is cut and the quality of the stone, pyrite has a colour somewhere between bronze and gunmetal, with an iridescent shine.

This type of jewellery is generally created into Art Deco style designs or to make jewellery that mimicks natural forms (dragonflies and flowers were particular favourites with the Victorians). Brooches, earrings and pendants produced in this style can generally be found at antique markets around the UK. Pyrite is rather a solid material, so pieces of jewellery made from marcasite have a wonderfully solid and pricey really feel. It looks fantastic as part of an overall vintage appear, or as a striking contrast to far more modern styles of dress.

can be rather fragile and you are advised not to use ultrasonic cleaners or chemical dips to clean it. Most of the time it can just be cleaned with a damp cloth - since it is not meant to be a extremely reflective, shiny piece of jewellery it does not matter too significantly if the sterling silver tarnishes a little bit. When the tarnish gets too considerably, you can just gently polish it with a silver polishing cloth to restore its look.