Heather Moll's Blog 
Excessively Diverted 

C 1790-1810 Aigrette crescent and spray. Silver with an open-back and set with pastes. I always enjoy working Georgian jewelry into a book. Sometimes it’s a thoughtful gift, and often that gift ties in to a theme of the story. And other times, in the process of searching out jewelry while I’m plotting, that piece of jewelry ends up being a plot point. In A Most Natural Consequence, a meaningful gift and a plot point came together with a diamond aigrette. An aigrette is a ha

Without Undue Pride is here! I have an excerpt and a jewelry-themed giveaway. I feature Georgian jewelry in every Austen variation I write.

I use Georgian jewelry in my books because a) it’s gorgeous and b) there’s a lot of emotion in this era’s jewelry, so it’s a great way to...

Jane Austen’s letters are filled with her observations on fashion, and this includes jewelry. In her letter to Cassandra from May 26-27,...

I usually feature a piece of Georgian jewelry in my full-length Austenesque novels. I love the sentimentality and bold gems popular in...

I’m a fan of Georgian era jewelry and work a piece into most of my novels. When I decided to write a book about Eleanor Tilney, the decision

Have you ever looked at nineteenth century portraits and noticed all of the coral jewelry? Adèle Romany, Portrait of a Lady at a Pianoforte, circa 1808, Museum of Fine-Arts, Boston. After you’ve looked through a few dozen portraits, you begin to notice the bright red beads everywhere. They adorn fingers, wrists, hair, ears, and necks. Even children are portrayed wearing coral beads. For thousands of years, Western societies have believed coral to have protective properties. T

I feature a piece of jewelry in every full-length Regency novel I write. Usually, jewelry is associated with glamor and wealth, or is a...

If you hear "paste jewelry", do you think ugly knockoff or, worse, Elmer's glue? Paste jewelry was popular among Georgian society and was never considered cheap costume pieces. They were designed and desired for their own sake---not as a gemstone substitute---and not only for affordability or for those who feared highway men while they traveled. A woman in Georgian England wouldn't have been embarrassed to wear paste because she wasn't trying to fool anyone. Real diamonds wit