Earrings

How an earring fastens depends on its type:

• –Studs: the post is secured at the back by a butterfly back that slides onto it or by a screw-on back that twists onto the threaded post; a screw-on back generally holds more securely.
• –Drop earrings: often hang from a hook or from a wire with a catch.
• –Hoops: close with a post or a hinge.
• –Clip-ons: a clip or a flat-ended screw grips the lobe.

For all clasp types, see the Clasps and Safety Catches card.

Earrings are less exposed to wear and knocks than rings and bracelets, so they also suit softer and more fragile stones such as opal, turquoise, moonstone, peridot, tanzanite, and pearl.

The two stones in a pair should match as closely as possible in color, size, and cut, and two pearls in size, shape, luster, surface quality, and color.

With larger earrings, weight and fastening matter too: an earring that is too heavy pulls the lobe down and can stretch the piercing over time.

The post sits in the piercing all the time, so the metal it is made of matters. If you are allergic to nickel or another metal, let us know and we will choose a suitable alloy (see Metals, Gold Colors).

Butterfly backs loosen with wear, so check now and then that they still hold firmly; we can replace loose ones. At the annual inspection, we check that the stones are still secure and that the catches of drop earrings work properly.

Perfume, cosmetics, hair spray, and acids in perspiration can damage nacre, the layers that give a pearl its luster. So put on pearl earrings only after you have applied makeup and styled your hair, and wipe them with a soft, clean cloth after wearing. Never clean pearls ultrasonically or with steam or ammonia.

Earrings have been part of every culture. Some 4,600 years ago, large boat-shaped gold earrings adorned the dead in the Royal Cemetery at Ur in Mesopotamia. Especially fine examples of classical design are earrings from ancient Greece, some representing boats, animal heads, or supernatural figures.

Over the centuries, earring design changed many times with fashion and hairstyles. In the 16th century, men often wore earrings too. In the 17th century and parts of the 18th, drop earrings were popular; they were usually elaborate, made of enameled gold and richly set with pearls or diamonds. In the mid- and late 18th century, girandoles were fashionable: earrings with three drops hanging from a central ornament, often a bow.

Earrings that jingle. Earrings with several hanging pearls were extremely popular with Roman women. They were known as crotalia, from the Greek word for rattle or castanets, because the pearls jingled as the wearer moved. Many have been found at Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Shakespeare’s earring. In the Chandos portrait, painted about 1610, Shakespeare wears a gold earring. It is the only portrait of him with a good claim to have been painted from life, and in 1856 it became the first portrait acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in London.

A pearl that may not be a pearl. In Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring (about 1665), the pearl is painted with just a few strokes of lead white. Costume and jewelry specialists think it is too big to be real, and research at the Mauritshuis found that it has no outline and no hook to hang it from.

We design every pair individually, adapting size, weight, and fastening to you and to how you will wear the earrings. When we design the earrings in 3D, we show you the model before we make them, so you can see them from every side. We select the stones or pearls for a pair so that they match.