On The Research Of Modern Times Shanghai Women’s Jewelry

Among the research of clothes history, jewelry’s research is very weak. This thesis teases the history of Shanghai women’s jewelry and jewelry industry from1840to1949, to tackle the vague and incomplete history data such as material, style, usage and the development of the famous shops. As a part of local history, jewelry history can enrich Shanghai’s local history, and it can be the reference for present jewelry design, and it also can inherit Shanghai style design culture.This thesis uses the theories from artistic design, fashion history, fashion aesthetic, fashion psychology and so on, with the help of many methods including material textual research, statistics, inferential analysis, oral history and so on, to discuss, research and analyze the features of modern Shanghai women’s jewelry.The conclusion of this thesis is as following:(1) The material features of modem Shanghai women’s jewelryThe material included5categories, such as diamond, usual gem, usual jade, organic gem and precious metal. It analyzed22kinds of jewelry material, and tackled their primary and present names, material, features and usage.(2) The style features of modern Shanghai women’s jewelryModem Shanghai women’s jewelry style included headwear, necklace, hand accessories and plastron. The headwear included earrings and hair accessory, and hand accessories included bracelet and ring. Earring:except the traditional Chinese earrings, Shanghai fashionable women preferred western earrings. At that time, there were ear stud, earrings and eardrop. The popular ear stud was the single pearl ear stud, the size like com, matched with platinum. Eardrops styles included geometric pattern, organic plants and tassels. Eardrop paid attention to be coordinated with face type and dress up. Hair accessory:Shanghai women preferred functional rather than decorative hair accessory. Necklace:the western pearl necklace was more exaggerate than Chinese women’s pearl necklace, which showed oriental women’s reserved beauty, while the western necklace paid attention to the visual shock on the integral shape, and the design feature was stronger. Bracelet:the common materials of bracelet at that time were jade and emerald. The fashionable women preferred to the diamond bracelet, the popular style was thin streamline. Ring:the common but not fashionable style was that a main diamond in the middle and a circle little diamonds surround. Fashionable Shanghai women worn big diamond ring, especially preferred the pink and kerosene diamond. Plastron:the common style was plant curve, using amount of splints and gems.(3) The usage of modern Shanghai women’s jewelryThe jewelry worn by modern Shanghai female spread with the "trickle down" model. The movie stars always worn earring, and the styles were very exaggerate and echoing with the perm style. As mainly considering the screen effect, the material of the earrings was not so important. The social celebrities preferred to the material and fineness, the styles were simpler than movie stars. Intellectual women preferred simple and appropriated dress, so the jewelry was not complicated, just embellished a little to make clothing and jewelry matched harmonious, and their jewelry had some utility function.(4) The feature of modern Shanghai jewelry shopsThrough the research of the Shanghai jewelry shops names, it could be known that if the shop belonged to silverware shop, the name were end with the word "silverware shop". While, the gem shop only used shop name such as "Ping Zheng","Yong Xing","Shuang Long", rarely using "**gem shop" to be a shop sign. As the development of Shanghai economy, there are more and more new commercial districts, the jewelry shops will extant its business scale with the development of the commercial districts. In1918, during the Northern Warlords time, Shanghai had some jewelry shops owned by foreigners, and disappeared in1945around the war of liberation.(5) The elements that affecting the application of modern Shanghai women’s jewelryThe economy and culture elements affected the application of modern Shanghai women’s jewelry. The culture elements included the formation of modern Shanghai women, the psychology to pursue innovation and difference and the push from mass media.