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  What you'll learn in this episode:   How Melinda created the definitive guide to the Napier Company. What made Napier stand out from other costume jewelry manufacturers of the 20th century. Why Chinese and Russian collectors are becoming increasingly interested in American costume jewelry. How the dawn of costume jewelry changed the way we accessorize. Why the craftsmanship of vintage costume jewelry is often as good as fine jewelry. Why being part of a community can be the most rewarding part of collecting.   About Melinda Lewis   Jewelry historian Melinda Lewis spent 11 years researching the history of a single American jewelry manufacturer —The Napier Co. Determined to bring the first book about this company to the public, she interviewed over fifty former employees from around the country spanning multiple generations. Those interviewed included the great-grandson of William Rettenmeyer, the designer who started in 1891; to designers who worked for Napier from 1941 to the close of the plant; as well as executive management, including the former CEO, Ron Meoni; and traveling salesmen, whose careers were no less than 30-plus years with the company.   After publishing her book, Lewis and her husband have spent the last year curating an extraordinary collection of vintage jewelry from around the country for her customers with The Jewelry Stylist and Vintage Jewelry Collect.  Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources: FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/thenapierbook/ THE NAPIER BOOK: https://napierbook.com  FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/thejewelrystylist2 INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/thejewelrystylist/ THE JEWELRY STYLIST: https://thejewelrystylist.com VINTAGE JEWELRY COLLECT:  https://vintagejewelrycollect.com CJCI : http://cjci.co  This forwards to https://www.costumejewelrycollectors.com/   Transcript:   Some collectors don't give costume jewelry a fair shake, but for jewelry historian Melinda Lewis, vintage costume jewelry has only brought her happiness. She spent over a decade researching The Napier Company, an influential costume jewelry manufacturer, and created a community of fellow costume lovers along the way. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the process of researching and writing her book, “The Napier Co.: Defining 20th Century American Costume Jewelry”; what costume jewelry is trending and where the hot markets are; and why the joy of jewelry often lies in connecting with others. Read the episode transcript here.  Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the second part of a two-part episode. If you haven't heard part one, please head to TheJewelryJourney.com.    Today, we are talking with Melinda Lewis, the author of the definitive work on Napier Company jewelry, “The Napier Co.: Defining 20th Century American Costume Jewelry.” She's also one of the founders of Costume Jewelry Collectors International. If you look at their website, CJCI.co, you'll be able to find all you want to know about costume jewelry. Welcome back.    Why did they start making costume jewelry? What I'm always surprised by is that everything was just as nice about it, but it wasn't a real ruby. That's all. It was a synthetic one. [Repeat from Part one]   Melinda: I think the reason why it became popular was that it allowed more people to adorn themselves. If you think about it, you had a real piece that might cost $2,000, but you could offer a lovely, finely crafted piece of jewelry for $20. It allowed the average person to feel as beautiful as the socialite that was wearing the $10,000 piece. It made things more democratic. It opened up the market to people that perhaps would not have been wearing that expensive piece of jewelry. I think that's why it made it more accessible to the masses.   Sharon: Would you say it was manufactured? Everything about it was the same except that it wasn't “real”?   Melinda: A lot of the manufacturing companies used the same manufacturing techniques as fine jewelry. Many of the people, particularly in the 1920s, had come over from Europe and had worked for the jewelry houses of Paris, so their techniques, their skill levels, were unsurpassed. They were jewelry makers. That's why some of the early pieces look just like fine jewelry, because there really wasn't a difference in the manufacturing with the stones, the setting and the design aspects. We were really fortunate, if you think of it, to have all of these fine jewelry designers and manufacturers immigrate to the U.S. and give us, as a society, the opportunity to buy jewelry that wasn't $10,000.   Sharon: Is it still true? Would you say the quality is still as good?    Melinda: I think it's line specific, but certainly jewelry today is probably not made to the same quality standards as costume jewelry was during the beginning of the 20th century. There certainly are going to be pieces, but most of the jewelry we see in department stores is not made in the same way it was made a hundred years ago. I can't really explain it. Often, it falls apart. It doesn't have the same plating. We don't use the same quality stones. I don't think the designers have a full understanding of the design aspects or design aesthetics they had a hundred years ago. It's hard for me to say it has the same quality that it did.   Sharon: Are you a flea market junkie or a swap meet junkie?    Melinda: Yes, my treat to myself is to do that on occasion, to go to an antique fair. But Covid certainly changed a lot of things in the last three years. The majority of my acquiring comes from online, but there's certainly something about spying that piece in a pile of jewelry. Someone has no idea what they have, and that's when your years of study pay off. You're able to recognize something and think, “Oh, that has value.”    Sharon: Do you still have a store online?   Melinda: I have three online stores. My husband and I have three. One is for the Napier book, and then two others are online venues for vintage jewelry. One sells Napier jewelry exclusively, and the other two sell regular costume jewelry.   Sharon: Except for this exposure to costume jewelry, I don't know that much about it. I hadn't heard about your website. I thought I knew everything about all kinds of jewelry. Tell us about your websites with jewelry.    Melinda: One is called TheJewelryStylist.com. That has higher-end costume jewelry. Vintage Jewelry Collect is my other website. That one has mid- to upper-level costume jewelry and probably a deeper array of things, from wood jewelry and Bakelite and rhinestone jewelry. My objective with The Jewelry Stylist is to have the higher-end collectables on that side. Then TheNapierBook.com is where I sell my book as well as vintage Napier jewelry.   Sharon: Do you have people—stylists I guess—who come to you because they're doing a movie or a TV show and they need something?   Melinda: I used to do that. In the early 2000s, I did a lot of work with Edward Enninful's team and had a lot of jewelry featured in Italian Vogue. I had my jewelry used for MAC cosmetics. I'm going blank on the other ads, but yes, I did do that in the early 2000s. However, it's a lot of work. It's not a paid gig; you do it for exposure. I stopped doing that probably around 2008 or 2009. It was a lot of fun and certainly exciting to see your pieces on the cover of Vogue Italia. My focus at that point was on the book, so doing that type of print work interfered with me moving forward with completing my book. So, I put it to the side.   Sharon: Did you stop everything and focus on the book? What did you do?    Melinda: I was trying to do both. We founded CJCI in 2009, so I had a lot going on. Incidentally, it's CJCI.co, not com.   Sharon: Thank you. It stands for—go ahead.   Melinda: Costume Jewelry Collectors International. We were formed to promote the study, enjoyment and promotion of costume jewelry. We started our club when we learned about the retirement of Lucille Tempestas' jewelry club. She had a jewelry club named the VFCJ. I knew there was going to be a void for people, because we really enjoyed getting together with jewelry clubs. I talked it over with my husband and decided I was going to ask my cofounder, Pamela Siegel, if she would join me on this journey of starting a new jewelry club. She said yes, and within three days, we had a website up; we had created groups on Facebook. Within three months, we had published our first magazine. In 2011, we had our first jewelry convention.   Sharon: You've had one every two or three years, like a convention or conference.   Melinda: We had one for seven years straight.   Sharon: Wow! It's a lot of work.   Melinda: It's a lot of work. Right now, our focus is on the website. We acquired a database from another website called Research In Costume Jewelry, which was a website created by Dotty Springfield. That's why people come to our website, to get information about jewelry marks. That was a very big project. We had to integrate all of the data from one website and incorporate it into ours. It was a costly and timely project, but we were able to do it. We get about 13,000 unique visitors a month to our website to look up jewelry marks.   Sharon: The marks specifically?   Melinda: Yeah.   Sharon: I did hear that you might have a cruise.   Melinda: One thing we're considering is perhaps doing a jewelry cruise next year. Pam and I will be talking about that this year to see if it's feasible. That might be in the works for 2024, but nothing's set in stone yet; we're just looking at our options.   Sharon: Nothing for 2023 this year.   Melinda: No. It was a tough decision. We had to make a financial assessment of whether or not it was viable for us, and still with Covid and the uncertainties and the contract obligations you have as an event promoter—if you don't fill it, you still have to pay the bill—we decided it was in our best interest to not have a convention this year. It was very sad choice for us, but one we needed to make.   Sharon: How did you and the businesses stay afloat during Covid? How did you manage?   Melinda: CJCI is donation based, so we were greatly affected by it and by not having conventions, which is our main source of income to try to cover the expenses of hosting a website and such. That income wasn't there. My personal businesses actually had a little bit of an uptick during Covid. That was a nice surprise, and certainly one I wasn't expecting.    Sharon: I've heard that a lot of jewelry websites or people who sold jewelry did find an uptick during that time because people were at home. What else did people have to do?   Melinda: Right, and a new buying community has opened up, like I mentioned with the Chinese market and Russian market. It's really gratifying to see other communities taking an interest in our American jewelry heritage.   Sharon: What are they looking for? Not that it's American, but that it's high-end or lower?   Melinda: High-end, and they're actually taking an interest in the history, which is fascinating and wonderful. I'm not sure that Americans in the same age group have the same interest in our history.   Sharon: I'm thinking about some of the smaller antique fairs I've been to. I don't collect costume jewelry specifically, but I've been surprised at some of the prices for high-end costume jewelry.   Melinda: It's been phenomenal. In the last two years, it has really peaked—perhaps not peaked; it has spiked.    Sharon: I'm sure it's good for you, yes. Sometimes I think, “Why didn't I start with costume jewelry?” You can buy a lot more, but it's really gotten expensive.   Melinda: Yes, it has. My advice to people is buy what you love and get the best you can afford. Grow your collection that way, but don't necessarily buy it for investment purposes. The market can be fickle, and it's generally a long game when you buy a piece. You have to have a pulse on the market. You have to know just the right time to offer it. Most people aren't following the market that closely.    Sharon: But that's something you do, follow the market for costume jewelry?   Melinda: Oh yes, every day.    Sharon: Do people come to you and ask you to appraise things?   Melinda: They do, but I don't offer that service. For one, I believe in California you have to be licensed to appraise. I give them guidance on what they can do. It's the same things I would do, like looking at closed auctions or websites that provide finished auction prices I do get that a lot, but I decline answering that question.   Sharon: I think you are correct in that you have to be licensed. Why should somebody like me, who clearly doesn't know that much about costume jewelry, why should I be interested? Why would I start turning my eye towards that as opposed to other antiques? Is it a progression? Do they go from one thing to another and end up with something else somewhere along the line?    Melinda: For me, with collecting costume jewelry, there is not only a recognition of the art form, but it's the community that is fostered during the research and the study. It's having that connection with other people who are interested in our history and the meaning behind that history. That is my biggest source of joy for collecting it. So, it is about the piece of jewelry, but it's not. It's also about the community that comes with the study of costume jewelry.    It's a wonderful time right now to become connected with others for research and collaboration and what I like to call jewelry genealogy. It really is, and that's exciting. When we learn a new detail about a piece of jewelry, there's nothing more rewarding. You get those endorphin hits. I think that's the thing I like about it. You get a surge of energy, a surge of joy. “Oh my gosh, I just discovered something new. I didn't know what that meant. Wow!” You collaborate with others and pull together your knowledge base. That's what makes it fun.   There are so many groups right now, like on Facebook, that people can join to aid them in their jewelry journey. These groups just weren't available a decade ago. It has expanded. In the last two or three years, the amount of jewelry groups for different aspects of studying it—and a lot of them specialize in one area. There are Schreiner groups. There's my page, and I have a group per se. There's the Alice Caviness group and the Hattie Carnegie group. People hone on in their interest and share their knowledge. That's the essence of what collecting is all about.    Sharon: Do you find yourself ever wanting to go astray? Do you ever see a piece of Hattie Carnegie, let's say, that you think is wonderful and buy it?   Melinda: Of course. I have a folder on my computer called “Want to Buys” for areas I want to learn more about. They are my bucket list pieces, and they're not Napier; they're other pieces. I'm like, “Oh, my gosh, I really want that piece. That is so polar opposite. I had no idea they made a line like that.” I think that's true for most collectors. The great thing about being in a group with other jewelry collectors is that you expose yourself to things beyond what you're accustomed to seeing. It makes it wonderful.   Sharon: Do you wear a piece of costume jewelry every day or every time you go out, no matter what you're wearing?    Melinda: No, unfortunately where I live, I don't think it would be appropriate to wear a piece of jewelry. When we go out to dinner, I'll put on something, but I don't wear it every day. I play with it every day. I love handling it or picking up a piece or refreshing my memory about a piece. That I do, but I don't wear it every day.   Sharon: I find myself wondering—there are communities, but if you have more of a community because you wrote the book and developed this community, do you have more than other people? How do I have community if I didn't write this book?   Melinda: The book certainly helped form my community. My book actually wouldn't have been published without my community. That's very true. When I say my community, in that sense, I mean my costume jewelry collecting community. It wasn't a Napier community. My community supported me such that we were able to raise the funds to do the printing. The Napier book would not have happened without the jewelry community supporting me. There are groups on Facebook that have been formed that specialize in specific designers. They don't necessarily have a book behind them or an author behind that group, so I'm not sure.   Sharon: What's your next book on? Are you continuing this one? Is it part two, or are you starting fresh?   Melinda: I'm not sure if there's another book in me. It takes a lot of work. There are certainly revisions I would do. I hope once we sell out of the hard copy, if I do an e-book, it will have revisions and updates. I've learned so much since we originally published. I'm on the internet every day looking at archives, looking at newspaper ads and clippings and identifying more specific years that things were made. That's a habit for me, to try to collect articles to further my understanding of Napier.   Sharon: It does sound like it takes a lot of work, a lot of time. What would you revise first, prices or the pictures? Would you say, “This was done elsewhere”?   Melinda: The latter, yes. If I had dated something, say, at the late 50s, but I found the ad that said, “No, it was 1962,” I would move it; I would put it in its proper age spot. Even though I was off by five years, I was trying to be as specific as I could. I would update some of the years for things and perhaps add more pieces or more dating I've since discovered.   Sharon: I don't know if there's any room for more pieces. You have so many. I was looking and I thought, “How did you do this?” The photos are really beautiful. They're clear and very detailed. It's very nice. Do people contact you because of the book itself?   Melinda: Yes, I do get that. When I was writing the book, I had a spreadsheet so I could keep track of everything. Everything was kept on spreadsheets, down to making comma changes and other things. I had a very extensive database so I could track where everything was to make sure it was in its proper place when I was laying out the book.   Sharon: Did your family help you? Or did they say, “Don't bother me,” or “I'm tired of hearing about it,” even though they were involved from a monetary standpoint?   Melinda: My mother helped with some of the editing. I had a number of friends helping me with the editing. My husband found the printer. We used the same printer as Condé Nast and Assouline Books. My husband went out and got the best printer we could get. In terms of the template for the book layout, he contracted with a couple of people that wrote for Consumer Reports, and they helped devise the template. From there, I worked with the template they provided to fill out the book. We had the foundation designed for us. My husband probably was my biggest support, following me all around the country. I couldn't travel without him. He was the one carrying all the equipment and what not.   Sharon: So, you would go to the collections? You would go wherever—   Melinda: Yeah, and I'd stay with the employees. They were most generous. I stayed with Henry for a week and talked Napier. We stayed with a gentleman named Bill Hurlbutt and his wife, Alice. We stayed with them for a week. We met with Napier employees on our honeymoon. I decided to go to Meriden and have a lunch date with Napier employees instead of taking a honeymoon. It was a lot of fun.   Sharon: I hope your husband had some inkling at the time when that happened. Thank you so much for being with us today. We'll look for part two. I'm sure all of us will be looking at jewelry and turning it over and trying to find the marks you've mentioned that we didn't know might be there. Thank you so much, Melinda.   Melinda: Thank you for having me, Sharon.   Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.   Thank you again for listening. Please leave us a rating and review so we can help others start their own jewelry journey.

What you'll learn in this episode:   How Melinda created the definitive guide to the Napier Company. What made Napier stand out from other costume jewelry manufacturers of the 20th century. Why Chinese and Russian collectors are becoming increasingly interested in American costume jewelry. How the dawn of costume jewelry changed the way we accessorize. Why the craftsmanship of vintage costume jewelry is often as good as fine jewelry. Why being part of a community can be the most rewarding part of collecting.   About Melinda Lewis   Jewelry historian Melinda Lewis spent 11 years researching the history of a single American jewelry manufacturer —The Napier Co. Determined to bring the first book about this company to the public, she interviewed over fifty former employees from around the country spanning multiple generations. Those interviewed included the great-grandson of William Rettenmeyer, the designer who started in 1891; to designers who worked for Napier from 1941 to the close of the plant; as well as executive management, including the former CEO, Ron Meoni; and traveling salesmen, whose careers were no less than 30-plus years with the company.   After publishing her book, Lewis and her husband have spent the last year curating an extraordinary collection of vintage jewelry from around the country for her customers with The Jewelry Stylist and Vintage Jewelry Collect.  Photos available on TheJewelryJourney.com Additional Resources: FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/thenapierbook/ THE NAPIER BOOK: https://napierbook.com  FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/thejewelrystylist2 INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/thejewelrystylist/ THE JEWELRY STYLIST: https://thejewelrystylist.com VINTAGE JEWELRY COLLECT:  https://vintagejewelrycollect.com CJCI : http://cjci.co  This forwards to https://www.costumejewelrycollectors.com/   Transcript:   Some collectors don't give costume jewelry a fair shake, but for jewelry historian Melinda Lewis, vintage costume jewelry has only brought her happiness. She spent over a decade researching The Napier Company, an influential costume jewelry manufacturer, and created a community of fellow costume lovers along the way. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about the process of researching and writing her book, “The Napier Co.: Defining 20th Century American Costume Jewelry”; what costume jewelry is trending and where the hot markets are; and why the joy of jewelry often lies in connecting with others. Read the episode transcript here.    Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it's released later this week.    Today, we are talking with Melinda Lewis, the author of the definitive work on Napier Company jewelry, “The Napier Co.: Defining 20th Century American Costume Jewelry.” She's also one of the founders of Costume Jewelry Collectors International. If you look at their website, CJCI.co, you'll be able to find all you want to know about costume jewelry. Melinda is passionate about costume jewelry, which we might consider a pejorative term, but once you take a look at this book and the range of jewelry that was produced and the manufacturing techniques that were pioneered, you'll never think about costume jewelry in quite the same way. We'll hear about her jewelry journey today. Melinda, welcome to the program.   Melinda: Thank you for having me, Sharon. It's my pleasure.   Sharon: So glad to have you. Tell us about your jewelry journey. How did you get into this?   Melinda: I was interested in costume jewelry as a teen by playing with and holding my grandmother's costume jewelry, but it wasn't until my late 30s, early 40s, that I really became interested. I went to an estate sale and bought a couple of sets, one being Hobé. I went home to begin my research and became completely fascinated by it. I stumbled upon an email list called Jewelcollect, which was owned by Liz Bryman, and from there, I went to my first jewelry conference held by Christine Romero at the Center for Jewelry Studies. I became completely intrigued with costume jewelry.   Sharon: Did you know you were buying a Hobé, or did you just like the way it looked?   Melinda: I loved the way it looked. It was marked, but I didn't know what Hobé meant. It meant nothing to me because I had never really owned a piece of jewelry before. It opened up a whole new world for me.   Sharon: Had you liked any other kind of jewelry? Had you been a collector before this?   Melinda: No, not at all. I was working in hospital pharmacies, so it was a complete change. I appreciated fashion because my grandmother was a hat designer during the 20s, and I think a little bit of that rubbed off on me. I wanted to be a fashion merchandiser before I got into hospital pharmacy, but I never had any interest or knowledge about costume jewelry prior to going to that estate sale.   Sharon: Wow! Did you start collecting once you became more knowledgeable?   Melinda: I did start collecting and going to more estate sales. I was able to purchase the inventory from a business that was going out of business. My first big purchase literally filled my Volvo station wagon, front to back, with costume jewelry. From there, I opened up a shop. I had a physical shop for a year and went online after that.   Sharon: Was this jewelry that filled up your Volvo all different kinds?   Melinda: Yes, it was all different kinds. It was great fun.    Sharon: Why did you think it was necessary to write a book? Melinda has corrected my pronunciation. How do you say it?   Melinda: Napier.   Sharon: Napier, O.K. Do you think most people know that?   Melinda: Probably 50/50. I always tend to correct people. I think when people say it “Napié,” it maybe has more prestige to it, but Mr. Napier was Scottish, and in the Scottish pronunciation it's Napier.   Sharon: Did you ever meet him?   Melinda: No, he died in 1960. But through my studies and after interviewing 53 former Napier employees, I was very clear about his preferences. He was a very strict man.   Sharon: I've been saying it wrong. I remember the ads I used to see in Seventeen Magazine a long time ago. I always read it as “Napié,” but I never had a reason to say it out loud.    How did you decide to write this book? I have to say to anybody who hasn't seen the book, this is the definitive work. It's beautiful and it's big.   Melinda: It is big. In 2002, I had the opportunity to purchase part of the Napier archive. When it arrived at my home, I had all this jewelry and knew nothing about it. So, I went on the internet and saw the same paragraph being repeated over and over on all of the websites. I knew there was a void that needed to be filled, so I began my journey of doing research on the company.    I started with one name. Mr. Ron Meoni was the President of Napier before it was sold. I wrote a letter to him explaining that I wanted to write a book on Napier and asked if he would give any guidance or assistance. From there, he gave me six names. I reached out to all of those folks, including my coauthor, Henry Swen, who has since passed away. Henry worked for the company for 35 years. During my research, Henry and I literally corresponded every day for eight years back and forth. He really gave me the inside knowledge of how the industry worked and the history about Napier. It was a phenomenal experience. I'm forever grateful to him for his assistance.   Sharon: So, you're ready to write your next book on a different company.   Melinda: I don't know. I still research Napier all the time. There's still more information, but I put them up on our Facebook page.   Sharon: There are so many illustrations and drawings. It's hard to believe there are more.   Melinda: Oh, there are a lot more. I just put a fraction of it in. Finally, I had to say stop, because I could have kept going when the book was already way larger than what I had anticipated.   Sharon: How long did it take you to write this?   Melinda: It was 11 years of writing and research, 12 years altogether with the layout. So, the project was 12 years long, but 11 years of that I spent researching and writing.    Sharon: When you say it's different than what you thought it would be starting out, did you think it would be a paperback or a pamphlet? What did you think?   Melinda: Normally books in this genre are about 288 pages, so that was our goal. But what I realized as I was writing was that there was so much I wanted to include that hadn't been included in other costume jewelry books: the marketing, the manufacturing, the designers, so many aspects that were different than just having a picture book. The more we got into that, the bigger the book became. I have about 60 pages just on marks and bindings and that type of thing alone to help guide the collector to circulate their jewelry.   In the beginning, I thought it would be a normal price book with a little bit of history interjected here and there. I felt if I did that, I was doing the company a disservice because I wouldn't be representing it as fully as I felt it needed to be represented. It really became an encyclopedia; it's so huge.   Sharon: It's a beautiful book. Besides the pictures of the jewelry, there are things about the business you've never seen. That was interesting; the marketing, the design, the manufacturing.   Melinda: Yes, I think because we covered those areas, it can give the collector a greater appreciation of what went into the manufacturing of the lines. I'm quite proud of that.   Sharon: Did you have any resistance in terms of people who wouldn't provide information or photographs? Would they say it's a company secret?   Melinda: The one thing I felt and experienced was that everyone was very protective of Mr. Napier, extremely protective. He had been gone for over 40 years, but his privacy and their unwillingness to share things sometimes because they didn't want to paint him in a negative light was quite interesting. So, yes, some employees were very protective of Mr. Napier. They respected him highly.    There are certainly stories I learned about him that will never be published, but his reputation was protected by his employees. They never really said anything negative about him. He was a very strict manager, so to speak. He held his employees to the highest standard, and if you didn't comply with that, you were out with no ifs, ands or buts. Napier means “without equal,” and he stood by that as a company mantra. He expected nothing but the best.   Sharon: What language is that in? I didn't think it meant anything.    Melinda: I'm not sure. I thought it was Scottish. The employees talked about that, about Napier meaning without equal. I haven't studied the etymology of that particular word, so I can't say for certain.    Sharon: Tell us about the book. You have so many beautiful images and pictures and photographs. Tell us how many pictures and how you got them.   Melinda: The book is 1,012 pages long. There are over 4,000 images and 250,000 words. A lot of the pictures came from employees themselves, especially the early renderings for E.A. Bliss and pictures in the 1920s. A lot of it came from Napier employees supplying me with the information. Unfortunately, I did not have access to the Napier paper archives, so basically everything in the book was given to me by Napier employees, in terms of ads and that type of thing.    99% of the pictures are images I took of the actual jewelry. While I traveled across the country, I would photograph the collections, and then we had them edited for the book.   Sharon: Did employees tell you, “This person has a collection in Wyoming,” or “This person is in Kentucky”? How did you find it?   Melinda: I found it through the collections of the employees I interviewed. I didn't interview anyone that was outside the company. Some people did supply their images. When I noticed something on eBay, I would write them and say, “I'm writing a book on Napier. Would you be interested in allowing me to include your image in the book?” So, some of them are from people in the trades who were selling on eBay, but for the most part it was either Napier employees' collections or pieces I had acquired from the archives.   Sharon: Do you think that Napier, because he pioneered a lot of the manufacturing techniques, do you think it's true that it was without equal? Or were all the costume jewelry companies doing the same thing?   Melinda: The thing that made Napier stand out from the other companies was that it used multiple manufacturing techniques. It had die-stamped jewelry, things that involved wire bending or casting or what they called stranding. They did pioneer some new techniques, especially during the war time when they were under government contracts. So did other jewelry companies, but what made them unique was that they had the ability to manufacture jewelry in multiple ways so they could respond to the market quite easily.    Sharon: I always think of the big three of costume jewelry being Napier, Trifari—I talked to a Trifari expert who told me that's wrong, but Trifari, and the third one is—   Melinda: Monet.   Sharon: Monet, that's right.    Melinda: Yes.   Sharon: What made Napier different?   Melinda: Monet did what's called metal. Trifari did color, more rhinestones. Marvella, which was another big one, did pearl. Napier did all three. It could go into a department store and fill the needs of a jewelry department with its entire line. That's what made it quite competitive. They would go in, probably often before the other salesmen got to go meet with the jewelry buyer, and they would sell their entire lines. If that store needed metals, they could supply metals. If they needed pearl, Napier could provide them with pearl. If they needed color, Napier had that.    Now, Napier's color or rhinestone jewelry sometimes had a distinct look because they utilized the dye-stamping technique. You'd get those really great, embossed, highly detailed metal pieces that were accented with rhinestones. But Napier also did rhinestone jewelry like Weiss—I mean the styles and techniques would be similar to Lee Serge or something like that. People are often surprised when they see the glitzy Napier rhinestone jewelry and don't realize Napier did that too. Yes, they did. They were able to offer the jewelry buyer a broad spectrum of inventory. They were a small company playing in a big pond with big players.   Sharon: Were they mostly manufacturing back east?   Melinda: Yes, in Meriden, Connecticut. Later they had a satellite factory for their model making in Providence, Rhode Island, because that's where most model makers lived. They did some of their manufacturing in Providence, but mainly it was in Meriden, Connecticut.   Sharon: Somebody who's into costume jewelry—I can't remember who—told me that one of them is still collectable and reasonably priced. It wasn't Napier, but I think it was Trifari. They said if you saw a piece of Trifari, you should grab it. Would you agree with that?   Melinda: Trifari is very hot right now. So is Schreiner in part because of the Chinese and Russian markets. 90% of the higher-end Trifari or Schreiner is going out of our country right now to collectors in China and Russia. That's a new phenomenon. Costume jewelry collecting tapered off a little or hit a lull, but these new markets have really changed things in the last year or so. The realized prices have been phenomenal.    In terms of Monet, there are still a lot of bargains to be found. There are some things that may cost a couple of hundred dollars or so. With Napier, the prices have remained steady over the last 10 years, but I'm now shipping to China. That's a new phenomenon. I'm starting to sell a lot of the higher-end Napier to our Chinese customers.   Sharon: There are not that many department stores around anymore. I can think of two maybe, but when you see costume jewelry, do you go in and look at it? If you haven't seen it before, do you look at the back? Do you look at the way stones are put in it? What do you look at, or do you look?    Melinda: I do. You look at all of the above. The back is just as important as the front in terms of looking at the construction. On occasion, when we go to the city, I'll go look at the jewelry departments, but I haven't really been looking at new contemporary jewelry because my focus has always been on jewelry that's made prior to 2000. I don't go shopping that much for the new lines.   Sharon: I guess I'm thinking of Oscar de la Renta, which has a costume jewelry line. They license it to whoever did it. Do you look at the back? Do you look at whether it was done 20, 30 years ago?   Melinda: Sure, you look at the back and the front. Oscar de la Renta has been made in the U.S. by Gem-Craft in Providence, and it's really beautiful. A lot of the contemporary pieces for the Oscar de la Renta line are wonderfully made. It's a great example of a contemporary line being made in the U.S.    Sharon: I'll find myself saying, “Oh, it's just costume.” Why do you think “costume” was pejorative? At first it wasn't pejorative, but now it's become, “Oh, it's costume.” What happened?   Melinda: For me, I haven't experienced that. Maybe that's because of the people I surround myself with. Costume jewelry elicits feeling of happiness. I don't think of it in a negative term, but perhaps some of our younger people who are minimalists do. If you were a minimalist, I could see why you wouldn't want to deal with costume jewelry. That's just frivolous. There are more important things to deal with. But in my community, costume jewelry is nothing but a positive. I don't have that negative attachment to it.   Sharon: Maybe it's just me. Why did they start making costume jewelry? What I'm always surprised by is that everything was just as nice about it, but it wasn't a real ruby. That's all. It was a synthetic one.   Sharon: We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to the JewelryJourney.com to check them out.    

In this episode, Scott Winterroth provides an update on some strategies and experiments he has been testing over the last couple of months. Plus, he shares some ideas for how things are going to go down in the future on this podcast. You guessed it, it's going to be awesome and stay tuned! Mentioned in this episode: Digital Acquisition Cycle for Content CreatorsBohemian Trixie (Heather's Instagram)Descript App for PodcastsContent AcademyWordSpaces WordPress HostingStrategy Head Book Club BYW Update #49 Transcript (Some editing was done to make it readable) Hello Everyone! It's Scott Winterroth, and this is episode number 49 of the Blog You Want in the Time You Have Podcast, and this is a little bit of unscripted episode. I am just going to sit down and talk about where I've been the last, you know, almost six months now. It's been quite a ride, sort of fun and I've learned a lot. I've had a lot of experiments, and I've also had some setbacks. Nothing crazy, no personal setbacks, just, business setbacks. Last September, I launched my first book called the Digital Acquisition Cycle for Content Creators. Wow, it's been an amazing experience and lots of sort of failed learning successes. I launched a book and, it's self-published, so I didn't work with a publisher or anything like that. I did it all myself. I mean, I worked with an editor, but in the day it was all done through me. And, It's been an interesting experience. I can't say it's been a boon for my business, per se, but it has been a great, for a couple of reasons. One, I didn't sell, I haven't really sold that many books on Amazon, not enough to make it a return on my investment. In fact, barely any. And I know that's an entire strategy on its own. So I've been spending time trying to figure out how to optimize Amazon and how to. Build visibility and Amazon. I do know that having just one book and being your first book, it's, it's a hard thing. Usually, the people who are killing it in Amazon have several different books or have multiple books and they also create books that sort of reach people, through like almost like SEO or search strategy. So I don't have that. I created a book that I think provides tons of value for people, and that's why I put it on Amazon to help share it with the world. What has been really helpful for me is that I've been doing a series of sort of workshops and presentations, and I bring the book to the presentations and I've sold a few at my events, which is great. I've also, Given several away to clients and to people who I think will find value in it, which that, of course, is one way to help build marketing because obviously, I'm asking these people to give a, give it to a friend if they think it's as a value. I realized it's going to take time, like any content endeavor, you can't start a blog and expect it to be a hit overnight. Along with trying to figure out this whole book world. My wife and I are really trying to figure out Instagram right now. Heather, my wife, shout out to her. She's actually away this evening, so that's why I'm recording a podcast, but she is and I are really trying to focus on building her visibility online at Her profile called the Bohemian Trixie on Instagram. She's like a fashion lifestyle blogger on there, and I'm trying to help her with that as well as figuring out Instagram for myself. It's challenging. I think it's actually in some ways easier for her, but just because it's so much, so much of a platform geared towards like fashion and, and lifestyle and photos that it's easier that way per se. But for me, I know I've been trying some WordPress tutorials and doing different things. You know, I've had some success, but, I'm not quite sure if I want to double down on that. I think it's better for me to help double down and help Heather and not so much focusing on my own Instagram. That kind of brings me back to the podcast. I really want to

In this episode, Scott Winterroth provides an update on some strategies and experiments he has been testing over the last couple of months. Plus, he shares some ideas for how things are going to go down in the future on this podcast. You guessed it, it's going to be awesome and stay tuned! Mentioned in this episode: Digital Acquisition Cycle for Content CreatorsBohemian Trixie (Heather's Instagram)Descript App for PodcastsContent AcademyWordSpaces WordPress HostingStrategy Head Book Club BYW Update #49 Transcript (Some editing was done to make it readable) Hello Everyone! It's Scott Winterroth, and this is episode number 49 of the Blog You Want in the Time You Have Podcast, and this is a little bit of unscripted episode. I am just going to sit down and talk about where I've been the last, you know, almost six months now. It's been quite a ride, sort of fun and I've learned a lot. I've had a lot of experiments, and I've also had some setbacks. Nothing crazy, no personal setbacks, just, business setbacks. Last September, I launched my first book called the Digital Acquisition Cycle for Content Creators. Wow, it's been an amazing experience and lots of sort of failed learning successes. I launched a book and, it's self-published, so I didn't work with a publisher or anything like that. I did it all myself. I mean, I worked with an editor, but in the day it was all done through me. And, It's been an interesting experience. I can't say it's been a boon for my business, per se, but it has been a great, for a couple of reasons. One, I didn't sell, I haven't really sold that many books on Amazon, not enough to make it a return on my investment. In fact, barely any. And I know that's an entire strategy on its own. So I've been spending time trying to figure out how to optimize Amazon and how to. Build visibility and Amazon. I do know that having just one book and being your first book, it's, it's a hard thing. Usually, the people who are killing it in Amazon have several different books or have multiple books and they also create books that sort of reach people, through like almost like SEO or search strategy. So I don't have that. I created a book that I think provides tons of value for people, and that's why I put it on Amazon to help share it with the world. What has been really helpful for me is that I've been doing a series of sort of workshops and presentations, and I bring the book to the presentations and I've sold a few at my events, which is great. I've also, Given several away to clients and to people who I think will find value in it, which that, of course, is one way to help build marketing because obviously, I'm asking these people to give a, give it to a friend if they think it's as a value. I realized it's going to take time, like any content endeavor, you can't start a blog and expect it to be a hit overnight. Along with trying to figure out this whole book world. My wife and I are really trying to figure out Instagram right now. Heather, my wife, shout out to her. She's actually away this evening, so that's why I'm recording a podcast, but she is and I are really trying to focus on building her visibility online at Her profile called the Bohemian Trixie on Instagram. She's like a fashion lifestyle blogger on there, and I'm trying to help her with that as well as figuring out Instagram for myself. It's challenging. I think it's actually in some ways easier for her, but just because it's so much, so much of a platform geared towards like fashion and, and lifestyle and photos that it's easier that way per se. But for me, I know I've been trying some WordPress tutorials and doing different things. You know, I've had some success, but, I'm not quite sure if I want to double down on that. I think it's better for me to help double down and help Heather and not so much focusing on my own Instagram. That kind of brings me back to the podcast. I really want to

As we evolve, we are not learning anything new – we are dropping into deeper places within. Transcript: Some friends were just talking to me about how they’ve decided to completely change their lives. They’re moving out of focusing on the practical, to taking care of the practical, but focusing more on what’s it all ...

Transcript -- Some of the quick keys you might use to make Lightroom easier to use.

Transcript -- Some interesting theories on mood suggests it may well play a part in creativity.

Transcript -- Some thought it would create another Universe, while others thought it would suck us all into a black hole. But the Large Hadron Collider is not as dangerous as we thought.

Transcript -- Some thought it would create another Universe, while others thought it would suck us all into a black hole. But the Large Hadron Collider is not as dangerous as we thought.

Transcript -- Some say Leenix, some Leenux, some say Linux. So how do you say it?

Transcript: Some elliptical galaxies form relatively early in the universe, seven to eleven billion years ago. Giant gas clouds with a small amount of rotation began to collapse. Remember that most of the mass of these gas clouds was dark matter. As the gas collapses stars form from the gas and stay on their elliptical orbits rarely interacting. Thus the shape of the galaxy is frozen as an elliptical shape. With little gas left over for star formation the stars passively evolve becoming older and redder with time, and in the present day we see an elliptical. In other situations ellipticals were formed by the successive merger and collisions of larger galaxies initially containing gas, but when the gas is used up or swept away in a cluster region the stars redden and become older and once again we see the shape of an elliptical galaxy.

Transcript: Some stars in the sky, somewhat hotter than the Sun with temperatures of 5 thousand to 10 thousand Kelvin, have very low luminosities in the range of one-hundredth to one-thousandth the Sun’s luminosity. Application of the Stephan-Boltzmann Law shows that they must be physically small with sizes less than a tenth the size of the Sun, perhaps as low as one-hundredth the size of the Sun. These stars are called white dwarfs.

Transcript: Some of the most important ancient advances in astronomical knowledge came within Central and South America, in particular from the Mayan culture. Around the year 400 AD, when Europe was slipping into the dark ages, Mayan astronomy was at its peak. Mayan records recorded the phases of the moon, eclipses, motions of the planets, and they had an extremely accurate calendar. Mayan astronomy was well regulated and supported by the state. In the Mayan calendar the year starts on July 26th, and Venus, the brightest planet in the night or morning sky, is the most important astronomical object. Mayan astronomy and mythology presented a rich brew. Unfortunately, most of the evidence of this culture has been lost. In the 15th and 16h centuries when the Spanish conquerors invaded South and Central America, they destroyed most of the Mayan knowledge. One of the very few manuscripts that remains describing astronomical knowledge of the Mayans is the famous Dresden Codex.

Transcript -- Some of the ways in which the ancient play “Persians” by Aeschylus has been interpreted in modern times.

Transcript -- Some of the ways in which the ancient play “Persians” by Aeschylus has been interpreted in modern times.

Transcript -- Some foods have travelled further in their lifetime than you!

Transcript -- Some foods have travelled further in their lifetime than you!

Transcript -- Some problems that can arise from differing viewpoints emerging in a shared community space, and possible threats to such spaces.

Transcript -- Some of the views that feed into the policy-making process.

Transcript -- Some of the views that feed into the policy-making process.