The History of Swarovski Special Colors

In the 50's the competition amongst the costume jewelry manufacturers of the day was intense. Often they would use Swarovski crystal beads and commissioned Swarovski to produce special color combinations for them. Each respective factory had their own combinations, these never really had names. In fact, the combinations were a closely guarded secret lest some competitor copy the combinations and therefore the designs that used them. The beads were received by the factories and assigned numbers rather than names, so that by the time they were sent to the production line, no one there knew exactly what they were using.

In 1972 the Albert Weiss Company closed their doors forever and the inventory was auctioned off. At the time, Albert Weiss was best known for their cast rhinestone pieces but they had a huge inventory of loose Swarovski beads as well. My father attended that auction and came home literally with a truck full of odd Swarovski. Many of these we still have and we are selling them on this website. You would be hard pressed to find these anywhere else as no one knows exactly which colors were combined with which finishes to produce the end result. Although we did also produce some combination items, the majority of these are from other manufacturers, including Coro, Napier, Trifari, Lissner, Capri, Royal of Pittsburgh, and others which we obtained at the various auctions either directly or in the secondary market.