This website is a joint UK/US collaboration and has sprung from a friendship founded on a common love of vintage costume jewellery/jewelry.
We have overcome the language difficulties by either providing translations (as above) or by just leaving the person who is writing that bit to use their native tongue. ;-)Our other commitments may mean that shipping is a little slower than on some other sites, although we will do our very best to respond to 'time sensitive' purchases. We hope any slight delay is compensated for by the skills we bring to the choosing of items to offer to you.
The titles of all sections reflect their content.
We wanted to create a site with the feel of old shops — you know, where the shop keeper opens the door to you, or at least looks up from the customer being served..and smiles; where there is a chair near the counter so you can sit down and chat if you like; where you feel that your personal patronage is important, rather than just your spending power. The sort of place where you feel happy saying ‘Do you ever see any??? If you do, can you let me know?’ and feel that your request will go on a real list and that we might really be able to get this for you.
We have set up Mænads' Gems as site where we can offer vintage jewellery and yet maintain our individual quirks, strengths and personalities. This is not a shop so much as a service, and the ‘reputation’ we want is the reputation of us as people, not us as 'another CJ site' . We want you to get to know us so you will be able to say to yourself, ‘René ferrets out plastics so I’ll contact her about so and so’ or ‘Mary knows clips, I think I’ll ask if she can supply European clips for my collection.’
In our minds we believe that shops tend to run YOU, whereas YOU run a family business. Our ‘family business’ is run from two countries with the intention of our enjoying ourselves and giving you, our fellow jewellery addicts, a good time, as well.We do, however, aim to make a professional site. With that in mind I wish to draw your attention to the following.
All pages and images are the copyright of this jointly produced site and are protected by the copyright laws of both the United States and Great Britain, as one of us is American and the other English. Any infringement of copyright will be taken seriously. The images of Britannia and Liberty are taken from coins and we acknowledge the copyright of the original artists commissioned by the respective mints, the adaptations are copyright of this site.
The owners of this site claim all intellectual rights over its contents. We will attempt to be completely accurate but, as we are human, we will undoubtedly make mistakes at times, and would strongly suggest that you do not rely entirely on our opinions but that in all cases you undertake further research to substantiate our views.Items may occasionally appear in more than one section but we will try to keep duplications to a minimum.
We hope you enjoy our humble efforts ! Contact Us
P.S. We think that Mænads have been given a bad press by patriarchal societies frightened by the thought of groups of women who, by having a direct relationship with one of the Gods, evaded the control of men: and STILL had a good time ... so there! About the Maenads