Lea Stein butterfly

Stein’s brooches feature animals, cars, household items, celebrities and people in a distinctive style, sometimes resembling Art Deco (which leads some people to mistakenly date her work to the 1920s). Each brooch has a name, sometimes as simple as ‘Fox’ or more descriptive like ‘Quarrelsome’ the cat. Each design might come in dozens of different colors and patterns.
Shop for vintage and modern brooches, pins and earrings by Lea Stein, a pioneer of celluloid and plastic jewellery. Find rare and exclusive designs inspired by art deco, animals, flappers and more. Lea Stein began designing her iconic jewellery from the early 1960’s, pioneering a unique method of working with celluloid & plastics. Together with her husband, Fernand Steinberger who was a chemist at the time, Stein developed a technique of layering and laminating extremely thin sheets of celluloid acetate. The multi-dimensional pieces were then baked for long periods, cooled and cut into shapes – a painstaking process that could take up to six months to complete.