DATE: Vintage, c.1980

Stylish vintage lever-back earrings dating from the 1980s. Each one featuring a vertical row of vibrant cornflower blue lab grown sapphires, of striking colour and excellent clarity. Like the invention of paste gemstones 200 years earlier, lab-grown sapphires could (and did) command higher prices than their naturally formed counterparts when they were first invented at the turn of the 20th century. In part because they were still really expensive to make, and in part because, once again, they represented, through technology, man’s ability to replicate one of Nature’s most prized creations.

STONES 

Blue Sapphires (lab grown)

MEASUREMENTS 

Drop: 1.8cm

Width: 4.3mm

WEIGHT 

3.6g (pair)

MARKS 

Stamped 925 (sterling silver)

CONDITION 

Excellent