Whether the necklace is called a T-bar or a toggle or a fob, one thing is for sure: This style is enjoying a renaissance.
For example, Anne Hathaway recently was photographed in character as Andy Sachs on the set of “The Devil Wears Prada 2” wearing the 18-karat gold Forme Diamond Toggle necklace from the New York jewelry brand Jemma Wynne.
The $9,030 piece was one of a series introduced late last year. According to an email from the brand’s co-founders, Jenny Klatt and Stephanie Wynne Lalin, “the styles vary in scale, chain weight and diamond accents from round to emerald cuts. Two feature rolo chains, a subtle nod to vintage-era toggle necklaces, while one is set on a bold, sculptural handmade chain that brings a sense of weight and intention to the piece.”
Some who purchase these chains may be unaware that the design was derived from the chains that secured pocket watches in the Victorian era.
Joanna Hardy, an author and a jewelry specialist on the BBC’s “Antiques Roadshow,” said the originals were called Albert chains, named after Queen Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
“The Albert chain was a recognition of wealth, status, and every gentrified male owned one,” she said, adding that the pocket watch and its winding key were attached to one end and then slipped into a waistcoat pocket, while the T-bar on the other end was threaded through one of the waistcoat’s buttonholes.
“Very often, every link has a 375 or 750 stamp,” she said, the British indicator of 9-karat or 18-karat gold. “From my experience, I have only ever seen this on Albert chains.
“When pocket watches went out of fashion, chains were often separated and made into bracelets and shared among the family. I remember that in the late ’80s and ’90s, there was a fashion to wear Albert chains as necklaces. They always commanded three times their scrap gold value in auction, as they were highly sought after, especially the ones made from 750 with a slightly reddish copper tinge to the gold.”
The fashion has come around again, with designers such as Jenna Grosfeld, the creator of Jenna Blake Jewelry in Los Angeles, creating T-bar necklaces and bracelets since the inception of her collection in 2014, and Dominic Jones, the creative director in London of the 886 by The Royal Mint collection, including silver, 9-karat gold and 18-karat gold versions in that brand’s core collection, which debuted in 2022.
Bear Brooksbank, a fine jewelry designer in East London, has also searched out Albert chains and other kinds of vintage jewelry for many of her clients.
“They have always been hard to find,” she said, “especially those of a decent length, but the high value of gold has certainly been a factor in causing many to have been scrapped.” (She now has in stock a 9-karat yellow gold vintage T-bar necklace with a chain of elongated links that the industry calls trombone links, priced at 3,250 pounds, or $4,370.)
T-bar necklaces with trombone links actually prompted Lucy Delius to establish her fine jewelry brand in 2022, after working for 15 years in the jewelry industry behind the scenes, including stints as a publicist. “I kept missing them at auction,” she said, “and finding one that worked well as a necklace, longer than the typical 15 inches, proved difficult.” For her debut collection, she studded a T-bar with tiny diamonds of different sizes and placed cabochons at either end of the bar, a look that has become one of her signature styles.
She now offers a range of T-bars in plain gold or encrusted with rubies, emeralds or sapphires, including the Buchanan T-bar, introduced in July, which has a textured gold surface reminiscent of vintage lighters of the ’40s and ’50s.
Ms. Delius’s jewelry, made of recycled 14-karat gold, is fabricated in Thai workshops certified by the Responsible Jewellery Council and sold through her own online site and Net-a-Porter, as well as independent retailers in the United States such as Goop; Tiny Gods in Charlotte, N.C.; and Broken English in New York City.
Tilly Sveaas has also been a trailblazer of T-bar shapes in England since she introduced her demi-fine brand in 2016. “It’s a functional aspect that has become a feature,” she said during an interview at her two-level studio in London’s Fulham district on a warm summer’s day.
Ms. Sveaas was wearing a brick-color linen shirt unbuttoned enough to reveal a chunky yellow gold T-bar necklace, along with earrings and a cord bracelet. As for the T-bar ring she wore, she said it was a prototype that she might begin making next year.
While there was just one T-bar in her inaugural collection, the design now appears in 130 pieces, from a Mini Gold T-bar on a Trace Chain (£85) to the Giant Gold Curb Chain Necklace with a T-bar close (£1,350). Ms. Sveaas’s chains come in certified recycled sterling silver or in 18-karat Fairmine gold plating over silver or brass pieces, including T-bars.
She said she was inspired by a gold pocket watch that once belonged to a great-great-uncle, a distant relative of the famous English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
“He was a reverend canon and was given it as a leaving present from the parish,” she said, displaying a grainy black-and-white photograph of the cleric. Eventually an uncle took possession of the watch while her mother wore the chain; Ms. Sveaas now has both pieces.
Ms. Sveaas doesn’t share her surname with her great-great-uncle, but she does have the same initials as Taylor Swift — and she said she assumes that is why the famous singer was seen wearing Ms. Sveeas’s Gold T-bar Curb Link Necklace in October (one of the initials appears on each end of the T-bar).
“I love the fact that the T-bar has become so identifiable with our brand,” Ms. Sveaas said. “It’s great to be associated with something that has such a strong and distinct visible identity.”
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