Featured Coral necklace

What are your thoughts on this coral necklace? Looks to have some age but the gold spacers look like more modern as the gold is coming off but look glass underneath?
Fingers crossed not dyed modern ones!
Please ignore the tatty background!
Thanks for looking

 

Lovely beads, K. I think it is ca 1960s natural coral.

 

Brilliant, I didn’t think they looked dyed. I’m learning!.
Thankyou

 

Beautiful beads, I'd have them restrung and wear them!

 

A good £1. The Masters are teaching me well
They definitely need restringing. Not sure if I will tackle it myself! The gold beads really let it down.

 

It looks like a home stringing job to me. I'd knot them with small pears & maybe tiny crystal beads between.

 

I'll YouTube some how-to videos!. Would you put them on silk? I hate that nylon stringy stuff.

 

Yes, if I'm going to knot, I only use silk. You need knotting tweezers to do it properly. When I was teaching myself, I practiced by taking apart some costume pearls that had belonged to my mother & become stretched out. You have to select a gauge of cord small enough to go through your smallest bead holes but thick enough to make knots larger than the largest holes. If you are knotting only beads all of the same type, there's usually no challenge. I solve the problem of mixed hole sizes by basically plugging the larger holes with smaller beads, little pearls, crystals or gold spacers, & then treating the 3 beads together as 1, knotting only either side of the small beads. Knots create joints, making the piece more supple.

 

There's something I didn't know I needed.
Thanks for the advice. I have lots of broken necklaces to play with!. Good tip for the varying size beads
What's the twisted round wire bit at the clasp called? Doubt I can do anything that professional but I'd like to google.

 

French wire. Some people prefer it & feel it gives a more antique look. I find it tricky & have never become good with it, preferring bead tips. I also find the wire does discolor over time, losing the gold look.

 

The great thing about bead stringing is that there really are infinite do-overs, with little loss other than the cord. You just cut it apart & start over.

 

Good philosophy.

 

It is also possible to pick apart a bad knot, but if the cord is fine, it can be a real b***h.

 

You might want to take a picture of what you are restrnging before you start in case you want to replicate. I forgot to do that on an old necklace and was puzzled when I ended up with too many beads.

 

And none of you twitted me on this?!

I would junk the 'gold' beads. Freshwater pearls are not expensive to buy by the strand. For myself, I would go with ones quite a bit smaller than the coral beads so the coral stands out, but if you like chunkier jewellery or the Wilma Flintstone look works on you (it doesn't on me), then you could go with larger ones. I would resort the beads into a graduated line up & put the nicest of the largest front & center. Taking before photos is a good idea if you want to recreate it as is; not so necessary if you are going to redesign it.

This is what I don't like about using French wire:



You have to double back with the cord & secure it by knotting. In this case it is really noticeable because the rest of the necklace is not knotted; even when there are knots all around, the ones at the ends tend to look different because they involve twice the cord.

 

I was wondering about that, but assumed you meant small pearls rather than these:



It could look cute though.

 

That's better.

 

I am awake sometimes. Only just.

 

I did try to think of a smart response but was too tired to come up with anything.
To begin with so tired that my brain did mull over whether a fruit accompaniment would compliment the coral