Pendant (Necklaces)

Every pendant is really two purchases that have to agree: the hanging piece and the chain carrying it. Sold as a set or bought apart, the two separate and recombine whenever you like, and that is the whole character of the format. A grandmother's cross moves onto a chain you will actually wear.

The bail decides whether that pairing works, the bail being the loop or tube the chain runs through. A fixed bail solders to the top of the pendant and lets it swing. Hidden versions run a channel across the back, so the chain seems to vanish behind the piece and the front sits flat. Width is the trap when you buy the halves separately, since a 2 mm curb chain will not thread a 1.5 mm opening. Weight sets the other limit: anything past about 5 grams saws a groove in a chain finer than 1.5 mm, and the two part at the bail rather than in mid chain. Drop adds up as well, so a 30 mm pendant on an 18 inch chain finishes roughly an inch below where the chain alone would sit.

Lockets are pendants with a hinge, trading a solid back for a catch that eventually wears out. Initial and zodiac pieces publish a letter or a sign, where a plain pendant states nothing. It can be given to somebody whose taste you only half know. Statement necklaces fill the space between the collarbones as one mass; this marks a single point and leaves the chain bare on either side. Lariats let you set the drop each time you put them on. Meanwhile, a pendant hangs at the fixed low point of a closed circle.

Open necklines suit it best, since 18 inches lands the piece in bare skin below the collarbone. Under a crew neck or a turtleneck, move up to 20 or 24 inches so it falls on the knit instead of behind it. Parents of babies should wait a year or two, because a weight hanging at chest height is exactly what a small hand grabs and the pull goes straight to the bail. One necklace budget stretches furthest here too, since a single good chain carries several different pendants.

Judging one starts at the loop. A soldered bail holds, while a split ring, the coiled open loop a keyring uses, unwinds off a chain under steady weight. Swing the piece and watch whether it settles facing forward, since a poorly balanced pendant hangs at an angle all day. Push any stone with a fingernail and read movement as glue letting go. Twice a year, slide the pendant off and look inside the bail with a phone camera, because a bright worn line there means the metal is thinning.