Fruit For a Well-Balanced Jewelry Collection

As fruit is essential to a good diet; it is, in my opinion, also essential to a balanced costume jewelry collection. If you've seen it in farmer's market or a grocery store, it's probably been refashioned into jewelry. I have quite a few photos, and I'm going to post most of them, so sit back and enjoy.

AUSTRIAN FRUIT PINS
Made in Austria during the post-war years of the 1940s and into the 1950s, Austrian fruit jewelry is realistic in appearance and very collectible. Most common are pins but many examples of earrings can also be found. Many factories produced these pieces and there is some variation in design from one to the other.

The pins are usually single or double fruits with leaves and stem. The fruits were made of molded or carved glass and the glass was usually backed with foil giving the fruit a vivid, shimmery, light-reflective coloration. Leaves are most often navette shaped stones and there is a single rhinestone accent on the stem. The stem and backing of these fruit pins can be found in silver metal, gold tone metal or black japanned metal. Photos of the reverse sides are at the bottom of the following grid of pictures.

        
Reverse sides showing three metals - Japanned, gold tone, silver tone

FORBIDDEN FRUIT
This series was produced in the 1940s. The pieces were not signed but identified by the card on which they were sold. Most Forbidden Fruit I've seen is either fruit or vegetable but other figural pieces were also made. They all share the basic components of their construction -- made with Lucite and studded with rhinestones. The leaves are usually enameled metal.

    
Reverse photos

DESIGNER PIECES
Most costume jewelry companies produced fruit jewelry. These are some of the many examples which can be found in the secondary market.

BSK Pin

     
Two Weiss Pins

Weiss Pin and Earrings

Hattie Carnegie Pin

Alice Caviness Pin

     
Two Ciner Pins

Earrings by Conceits

Coro pin

Danecraft Pin

DeNicola Pin

Christian Dior Pin

          
Three JJ Pins

Kenneth Jay Lane Pin

Staret Pin

Swarovski Pin

     
Five Trifari Pins

Michael Michaud Pin

Matisse Renoir Pin

Pell Pin and Earrings

Sandor Pin

Original by Robert Pin

         
Three Warner Pins


     
Two Schreiner Pins

UNSIGNED FRUIT JEWELRY

Hopefully you've been inspired to add more fruit to your jewelry diet. Vintage pieces are available on the secondary market through online sites, flea markets and antique malls. And or course, fruit is loaded with Vitamin C.