Featured Vintage plastic jewelry - first purchase

Hi Everyone! I started to develop a fascination toward vintage plastic jewelry recently. I would like to know more about them and start a collection. This is the first piece I bought a few weeks ago. Can you help me with the dating and the material?

It is a faceted bangle, very shiny, in an amber color. The seller said it was probably from the 40s and lucite, but when I tested it with hot water it smelled very much like a science lab. (Im not sure what is the exact smell of phenol.) I don't have Simichrome (could only order it from abroad), so can't test it that way at the moment. Anyway the smell had me wonder, even if for this design I mainly found pieces advertised as lucite online.

 

Can you get good old sodium bicarbonate/baking soda? First wash the bangle good. Then dunk a damp cotton swab in some of that and rub the inside of the bangle with it. Rub hard and stick your nose next to the bangle. You should smell a formaldehyde stink if it's bakelite as I suspect. The swab should turn yellow or brown at the contact point too. If not, it's something else.

If you do the same test and smell mothballs it's celluloid.

 

Thanks for the awesome advice! I will buy some bicarbonate tomorrow.

 

Hi everyone! I did the testing with sodium bicarbonate, and there is a yellow stain on the cotton swab. It is not as dark as I see with some tests with simichrome polish. But I still think it is a positive. Considering the smell of the bracelet under hot water, I think it is bakelite. Or should the stain be more yellowish or stronger? What do you think?

 

Bakelite I think but I'm no expert. I have just posted a piece recently that I thought was bakelite but turns out it is something else.
Welcome to the forum. You will learn so much here

 

@evelyb30

Thank you very much! Im very happy to have found this community.

 

I have a hunch it's bakelite. I got one in Savers the other day that's a root beer swirl like that. Since it had been out and I needed to wash it to handle it anyway, I used hot tap water. Smelled the formaldehyde and didn't need the baking soda.

 

@Vic23 Google the term " prystal "

 

Thanks for your comment! Now I also know the name of this color.

 

Ok, thanks for the suggestion.