This “thing” started because my mom gave me a bracelet and because of a dream.

In the dream, I purchased a gold-filled bracelet with semi-precious stones.

I grew up in a part of the country where the pre-Columbian inhabitants were Iroquois peoples, and as you may know they had a special relationship with dreams: they would act them out. Such a striking thing, this idea that you should deliberately carry over something from that world to this, the dreaming world to the waking. Interweave them, make the dream into something solid, “objective.”

I don’t make it practice to act out my dreams but in this case I didn’t hesitate. I immediately started shopping for a scarab bracelet like the one in my dream. Ebay, antique marts. I subsequently bought several. I’ll post pictures.

I didn’t spend a lot of money on this little collection. There are 14K gold versions. I stuck to 12K golf-filled. I rarely spent more than about $30.

I also became very curious about them–but interestingly, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of information lying about on the interwebs about this particular category of bracelet.

By which I mean: costume jewelry that was made/sold in the mid-20th century.

Scarab jewelry, more broadly, has been popular–on and off, wildly popular–at various times in recent history. The discovery of King Tut’s tomb in 1922 set off the first of the wildly popular periods. You can find pieces from this period which feature scarabs as well as many other Egyptian motifs. Some of it is very beautiful, with such a lovely 20’s feel, some a little styled as Art Deco. My sense of this jewelry is that it tends to feature single scarabs; much has a heavier “museum piece” sort of feel.

What’s less clear is what happened a bit later, in the 50s or so, when this new sort of bracelet became popular.

(And by the way: if you were in the jewelry business back then and know anything about this, please contact me! I’ve tried to find someone who was there at the time and have struck out, so far.)

I deduce from the enormous number of the bracelets floating around on ebay and the like that a LOT of them were made.

The other thing that is interesting is that–to my eye at least–the stones have a kind of mass-produced look to them. By which I mean, you can find bracelets that were made and sold by different designers, but the stones appear to be very similar. So there must have been some sort of supplier/supply chain aspect to this. Jewelry designers were sourcing stones from somewhere … but where?

In most cases, the stones are oval cabochons. The dome is carved (etched?) with markings to show it’s a scarab: the ponotrum, the elytral suture (line between the elytra, the hard covering over a beetle’s flying wings). The underside almost always has carvings on it as well, which are supposed to be hieroglyphics that confer luck or blessings. I’ve not had a lot of success–yet–finding out exactly what the symbols are or what they mean, or are supposed to mean.

If you pay any attention to mythology you know the scarab beetle has a long history of mythological associations. I won’t reproduce it all here, since a google search will do a better job than I can, but suffice to say it’s associated with transformation and rebirth; with death giving birth to life; with immortality; and with the sun (including the sun as Ra).

I’ll post more about these as I figure more out. But in the meantime, here are my bracelets, with a little bit about them :)

#1. This pastel bracelet is the one my mom gave me. She had it as a girl/teen so it is most definitely 1950s vintage.

I’m no jewelry or manufacturing expert, but these cabochons are plastic, so I assume they were molded. There are no hieroglyphics on the backs. There’s some blueish corrosion on the metal–this isn’t “fine jewelry”! But I love it because it’s light and … I just realized when I tool all my pics I should have put something in the photo for scale. Sorry :/

For this bracelet, the cabochons are very small (about 7/8ths of an inch each), so the bracelet is lightweight, which is so nice for wearing, and the pastel colors pair perfectly when you’re wearing pastel colors.

Thanks, Mom, I love this and love that you had it as a girl :)

#2. The cabochons on this second bracelet are even smaller than the ones on my mom’s bracelet. But these are “real” stones. They have hieroglyphics on the backs.

It’s marked that it’s 12K gf on the clasp.

Many of these bracelets have a safety link, which I find utterly endearing. This sense that it’s something precious, so you need a bit of extra protection to ensure it doesn’t fall off your wrist and get lost.

#3. This is one of the first bracelets I purchased and one of my favorites to wear, because the cabochons are smaller/lighter, making it a nice piece of everyday sort of jewelry.

The cabochons are more elongated than you usually see on these bracelets, so it’s not really a typical shape.

There’s a mark on the clasp that may be a designer mark, but I have to research it a bit more, so I’ll post an update (hopefully) at some point. The mark is a bit off the edge which makes it hard to be sure of the letters. It looks like BUJAN or 8UJAN maybe?

#4. This is the first bracelet I bought after my dream, and is what I think of as the classic ’50s scarab costume bracelet.

It’s got a mark so I’ll come back later with what I can dig up about the designer.

One thing I didn’t notice when I bought this (:/) is that the pink stone has some internal fractures that, in some light, give it a cracked/damaged appearance. I think I read somewhere that this can happen to some of the softer stones. But the stone is intact and as you may have gathered, I use these bracelets for everyday wear, so I don’t mind the cracks. Much.

#5. This is sometimes my favorite bracelet of the collection. It’s a bit more hefty than the ones I’ve pictured so far–the cabochons are a bit more than a half-inch long each. So when you wear it, you really notice it–you feel like you’re wearing jewelry. But at the same time, it’s not hugely flashy. And because there are so many colors, it pairs with just about anything.

It’s got a mark.

I also love how the safety chain is so small and delicate relative to the rest of the bracelet. I wear this one a lot :)

#6. This bracelet doesn’t have a safety chain at all. And the stones are larger–the largest of any of my scarab bracelets. About 3/4 inch each. So with the size of the stones, there are only 5 versus 6 in the previous bracelet. Needless to say it’s also the second heaviest bracelet of this little collection.

It’s got that nice bright blue lapis stone which is wonderful, and I also love the translucent two-toned stone (quartz?) on the right, and the way the designer aligned it so that the darker band is across the beetle’s “head.”

It doesn’t seem to have a mark.

#7. This is the heaviest of my scarab bracelets. Each individual stone isn’t that large (the same length as the stones in #4) but there are seven of them, and they are deeper/thicker than any of the other bracelet stones.

It’s got a mark so I’ll be back on this one.

The stones on this one are particularly lovely, aren’t they?

The identification of the stones is worth a whole separate post as well, btw …

#8. I didn’t start wearing this one until recently. I bought it at an antique shop in the Finger Lakes, back east, and for a long time I think I sort of avoided it because it’s not gold. But recently I’ve realize that I really, really like it, and it’s become one of my favorite bracelets to wear. I love how the stone colors are so cool. It pairs so well with anything blue or navy. I also love that there are those pretty links between the stones.

#9. Last one! And the most atypical of them all, right? The cabochons are perfectly round–they almost don’t even look like scarabs, although the carvings on the stones adhere to the motif, without question.

It’s got no hieroglyphics on the back.

I wear this one the least … in fact, I don’t know as I’ve ever worn it. It’s a bit too … bright. I feel like it kind of crosses the line from a kind of funky cultural relic into something that someone would have tried to pass off as almost-fine. Like: the cool kids were all wearing scarab stone bracelets, now here’s a version for grandma.

If I do wear it, it will be on a night when I truly dress up. And I won’t be thinking of it as a scarab bracelet but as a scarab-like bracelet ;)

So that’s my scarab bracelet collection. You can find similar examples all over ebay and etsy. Just don’t think you have to pay a lot of money for the 12K gold fill ones–I’ve seen people list them at very high prices ($80 and up) but if you shop around you’ll find very nice bracelets for under $30. Obviously the 24K versions are more expensive but I was never interested in owning one in that category. I wear these as everyday, casual jewelry. I don’t want something that I have to worry about when I’m wearing it.

I’ll be back with some more posts to delve into these a bit more. There was a whole niche industry dedicated to churning these things out in the 1950s-70s. There has to be someone around who can shed some light into it. Where were the stones sourced? Why were they so popular in this particular period (Elizabeth Taylor/Cleopatra may have had something to do with it!)? Were there any costume jewelry designers who were “known” for scarab bracelets?

Please contact me if you have any inside info–I’d love to interview for a future post!

UPDATES: I posted about the “hieroglyphics” here, and put up some pictures of other bracelets sent in by site visitors here. Enjoy :)

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