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Friday 14 October 2022

The History Of Miracle Jewellery

 Miracle jewellery is a collectable British UK Jewellery brand. The company was started in the late 1946 by A Hill and Company and was based in Birmingham.  Taking inspiration from ancient jewellery finds, they became leading British designers of Celtic Jewellery, Scottish Jewellery and Irish Jewellery.  They have also made some stunning Mackintosh, Renaissance, Egyptian, cameo and classical lines.

Celtic style faux amethyst brooch by Miracle.
 

 

This Celtic knot work design brooch can be found in quite a few different colour ways.

 

 

 

 Making their own reproductions of semi precious stones from mainly bohemian glass,  Miracle produced many uniquely coloured, beautiful jewellery pieces over the years.  Other companies associated with/bought by Miracle are Quarrier Ward & Ward Brothers, Mizpah and Sol D'or.  In 2006 the original Miracle Company closed down,  its ownership was taken over by St Justin who bought their design archive in 2013.  

We ourselves stock a wide range of vintage Miracle jewellery pieces, including stunning Miracle Celtic necklaces, Scottish style Miracle brooches, Celtic themed Miracle brooches, medieval style Miracle brooches as well as Miracle bracelets, earrings and rings. So please check out our Vintage Miracle items.

 

For those interested in finding more out about Miracle jewellery, there used to be a fantastic Miracle Jewellery collectors group based from the yahoo groups server of which I was lucky to be a member,  I can honestly say it was the best place for all information on Miracle jewellery sadly when Yahoo groups ended all the information was lost and it seems irrevocably so, there is still an image event page left on the internet but it is only a tiny fraction of the information that was in the groups sadly.  You can check out the image event site here https://imageevent.com/pastandpresent/miraclejewelry.

Some facts we do know about Miracle,  there seems to have been a Scottish works in their earlier times based in Coldstream, Berwickshire, sadly I havent been able to pull up much information on this location to date.  The Birmingham location was in Frederick Street making up part of the vibrant Jewellery quarter, the original building and factory is now gone and a new building is located where the original once stood. I am struggling to find exactly when the building was replaced but it seems to have been around 2013.  I have been able to find information tying Miracle to the this location dating back to 1962 though they most likely occupied it a lot earlier.

Other useful facts:

Miracle produced some rare and very sought after silver items in their lines.  These pieces are all fully hallmarked with the makers mark A.H though not all have the Miracle signature mark itself, the few Ive seen were assayed in Edinburgh but there were definately items assayed at the Birmingham assay office.


This ring one of the rarer silver pieces by Miracle.  It is fully hallmarked on the inside of the band A.H and was assayed in Edinburgh 1974-75.  Silver pieces whilst they are rarer do come up now and then and would make a great piece for a collector due to their scarcity.

 

 

 

Not all Miracle Pieces are signed, some Miracle pieces have other signatures or marks: Sol Dor for example.

Due to the not all Miracle pieces being signed a lot of pieces are attributed to Miracle that are not designed by them, there were other companies producing Celtic lines at the time such as Jemcraft, Jacobite and even Exquisite produced a few Celtic lines which Ive seen mistakenly seen referred to as Miracle

Miracle didn't just use faux gem glass stones they also used lucite and some real semi precious gemstones in some of their pieces, though the bohemian glass pieces seem to be the most common.

Arts and crafts style lucite set brooch.

 

 

 This vintage arts and craft style large brooch is set with a blue lucite cabochon like many Miracle pieces it was available in several different colour ways

 

 

 

 

Miracle didn't just produce Celtic style Jewellery, they produced many many other lines,  so unless that' s a line you wish to specialize in collecting make sure not to discount their other styles.

We hope to expand this page in future with further information so please keep checking back.