#I take malicious glee in un-converting Victorian earrings that have been screwback'd

[marzipanandminutiae]

Im eyeing up a totally gorgeous pair of Victorian Bohemian garnet earrings, which are on sale, but I'm hesitating because they are screwbacks. Do you have any idea how easy it would be to convert them to regular drop earrings? Usually I would be loathe to alter a piece of history, but in this case I suspect they may have actually been designed for pierced ears initially and converted to screwbacks in the 1920s, so I think it's okay.

Depends on the design. If they have a little loop at the top of the dangling element, you can just use jewelry pliers- or sometimes your hands -to open that up, slip it off of the screwback base, and put them on French wires from a craft or jewelry-supply store.

These could be converted at home, though you'd lose the garnets on the bases

With stud-type earrings or those that have a lot of ornate decoration on the base, it might be harder to do, or just harder to justify if you'd end up losing lots of stones.

These are screwbacks and you'd need a jeweler to do a more involved conversion on them.

The other thing about Bohemian garnets is that the style remained popular for a LONG time. Like, "I'm not entirely sure they aren't still making new pieces" long. So there are earrings that exist from the Pierced Ears Are Evil era of mainstream US and UK history (mid-1920s to 1960s), and they often look very similar to earlier styles. A few tells of later pieces that I've heard of from jewelers, but never actually been able to say are 100% certain, are to look for settings with open backs, flat-topped as opposed to rose-cut stones, and an increased use of cabochons. Again, though, take that with a grain of salt, because for every tell a jeweler has imparted to me, another jeweler has expressed skepticism. The styles changed so little that without provenance, it can be very hard to tell.

That being said...they would have done it in a heartbeat. See also: the huge numbers of pierced earrings that, as you say, got converted to screwbacks

because only Dirty Immigrants and Loose Women pierce their ears, and grandmothers from the Bad Old Days, and anyway piercing HURTS so it's PAIN FOR BEAUTY and UNFEMINIST! wear screwbacks instead! just ignore your earlobes slowly going numb; this is much more progressive :)

I will never understand the anti-ear-piercing era, and I'm so glad it ended before I was born. What a load of nonsense

Anyway, hope this helps!