Jewelry: Pierced Earrings

[laughingmagpie]

I've done my best and really tried to wear vintage clip-ons and screwbacks.... they just don't compare in comfort with pierced earrings.

So, I've started looking for 1930s-1960s earrings for pierced ears, and I'm wondering: Do they even exist?

Even when I find a pair that claim to be that vintage and are for pierced ears, I'm often skeptical of their age, since they seem to be so rare.

So that's one question, the next is related: Weren't pierced ears common earlier - in the 19th Century through maybe the 1910s?

It's my impression that pierced ears went from being common to something "only gypsies did" (to paraphrase amandainvermont in a recent post ). Any insights to how this sort of social change happened (if it did)?

Thank you!
Jen

 

[Linn]

There are early pierced earrings from the 19C-1910 and there are pierced earrings from the 1920's-1930's, but once clips became popular (patented in the US in 1934) more costume earrings were made with this finding. Screwback earrings were available from about 1896 (have to look this up for the exact date) so many early 20C. earrings are screwbacks. I have lots of screwback earrings from the 1920's - 1940's in my personal collection and quite a few early clip earrings which I love!

Pierced earrings became popular again in the late 1960's but were not in "Vogue" prior to that in the US.