When collectors find two pieces of vintage jewelry that look remarkably alike, one question almost always follows:
Could they both have been made by DeLizza & Elster?
Sometimes the answer is yes. DeLizza & Elster produced variations. Colors changed. Stones changed. Pieces could be made larger or smaller for a customer.
But there is another part of the story that is just as important.
Other manufacturers copied jewelry.
Frank DeLizza talked about this repeatedly in his memoir, and his stories help explain why two pieces can look remarkably similar while still coming from different manufacturers.
Frank Was Talking About Imitation Early On
On page 33, Frank wrote about a visit to the factory by Mr. Trifari. His father had previously been asked to do design work for Trifari but had declined because he had his own company.
Frank later made the point that his father was too honorable to imitate Trifari’s cast jewelry.
Even this early in the story, imitation was clearly something manufacturers were aware of.
Sometimes Even the Manufacturer Didn’t Know
On pages 69–70, Frank described being given an unsigned mouse buckle by Elegant Leather and being asked to reproduce it.
D&E made a small quantity.
Then a legal complaint arrived.
The original design belonged to Mimi Di N.
Frank explained that he had not known whose buckle it was because the sample was unsigned. Production stopped once the situation became clear.
That story is important for collectors today. Two pieces can be extremely similar — perhaps nearly identical — and still have come from different manufacturers.
Similar Jewelry Was Already Competing With D&E
By the late 1960s, Frank was seeing the issue from the other side.
He discovered that his longtime representative was also carrying a competing rhinestone line. Frank described some of the styles as much like theirs and said the competing line was essentially an enlarged version in similar colors of the D&E line.
So a larger flower, butterfly or other familiar design does not automatically become another D&E variation simply because the resemblance is strong.
Then Someone Took the Actual Samples
One of Frank’s most revealing stories appears on page 96.
He had sent two D&E samples — an elephant and a donkey — to a New York customer who hoped to obtain a large chain-store order.
At the jewelry show, Frank’s friend Herbert Stehberg found those same pieces in another manufacturer’s room.
They were on the same sample pads, but now they had new item numbers and lower prices.
Herbert took the pads and brought them back to Frank.
After that, Frank said that customer never received advance samples from him again.
This was not simply two companies having a similar idea. Frank was describing his company’s own samples appearing in another manufacturer’s line at a cheaper price.
Frank Explained Why It Happened
On page 100, Frank explained the larger problem.
Most stones and components were available throughout the industry. Even when D&E introduced a new stone or color, exclusivity might last only one season before the same material became available to other manufacturers.
That meant another company could make something similar — often more cheaply.
Frank also described smaller companies without their own design staffs that survived by reproducing the work of others.
And sometimes customers themselves were responsible. A customer might take one manufacturer’s successful piece to another factory and ask for it to be reproduced at a lower cost.
Frank summed it up very simply:
“That was the nature of the industry.”
The Problem Never Went Away
Decades later, Frank was still talking about the same problem.
Part of his final chapter was titled “The Chinese Start Knocking Us Off.”
By the 1980s, inexpensive imported copies were another form of the same competition D&E had faced for years.
What Does This Mean for Collectors?
DeLizza & Elster absolutely produced variations.
Customers selected pieces from the line and requested different colors. Pieces could be altered. Components changed. Designs evolved.
But variation cannot explain every piece that resembles Juliana jewelry.
Frank’s memoir gives us the other half of the story.
Other manufacturers had access to many of the same stones and findings. Manufacturers copied one another. Customers sometimes carried samples from one company to another. Successful designs were reproduced more cheaply.
That is why identification cannot simply become:
“It looks close enough, so it must be another Juliana variation.”
Similarity matters.
But differences matter too.
That is especially true with familiar forms such as butterflies, flowers and other motifs made by many costume-jewelry companies.
When Frank was personally helping collectors identify D&E jewelry, these kinds of differences were part of the discussion. He had spent decades buying the materials, costing the pieces and watching the jewelry move through his own factory.
Even Frank acknowledged that photographs could sometimes make identification difficult, but in most cases he felt he could recognize whether something was theirs.
A close resemblance deserves investigation.
It does not automatically establish a manufacturer.
And a difference should not automatically be dismissed as a harmless variation simply because we would like two pieces to belong together.
Frank’s own stories show us why.
DeLizza & Elster created variations of its own designs.
And other manufacturers created look-alikes, reproductions and copies.
Both things were happening.
Want to Look a Little Closer?
Over the years, I’ve put together a number of training albums using actual jewelry examples to show how difficult these distinctions can sometimes be.
If you would like to explore the subject further, these are especially useful:
They are older training albums, but the lesson behind them is still important: similarities matter, but so do the differences.
Source: Frank R. DeLizza, Memoirs of a Fashion Jewelry Manufacturer, including pages 33, 69–70, 76–77, 96, 98–100 and 154–155.