Ómama jewelry is perfect for playing dress-up in history

A coiffed Victorian woman gazes out from a hand-painted porcelain cameo. Glistening blue and red glass beads from Bohemia are inlaid into a Transylvanian necklace setting. Porcelain beads with a gold patina from Pécs are draped across the glass. Nearby, strand after strand of pearls, glass beads, and semiprecious stones decorate the shelves and tiny stands of Ómama Bizsuja, an antique jewelry shop tucked into a courtyard near Jászai Mari tér.

Monika Jones

(Top) A turn-of-the-century Transylvanian necklace inlaid with Bohemian glass, Ft 22,800; (bottom) some of the beads adorning Ómama Bizsuja in District V.

Named after a German term of endearment for "Grandma," which was also used in Hungary at the turn-of-the-century, all of Ómama's costume jewelry is "from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries," says saleswoman and jewelry virtuoso Julia Nagy, who wears a magnifying glass like a necklace and specializes in repair.

Most of the larger pieces are priced around Ft 5,000 (€25) and up, and the average price is Ft 20,000 (€100). Smaller earrings and necklaces are priced less, it all "depends on their condition, style and stone," says Nagy. "We have jewelry from all over the region - it dates back to the Hapsburg Empire," she adds.

Glance up from the well-lit jewels for Ómama's other offerings: period tschokes, handbags and clutches, folded table linens, porcelain tableware, and select attire.

Though there's a second store in Buda that offers retro jewelry and clothing from the 1950s and 1960s, the fifteen-year-old flagship shop is where collectors, sellers, gift hunters, and curiosity seekers come.

And Ómama's can crowd easily - it cannot be more than five square meters, but good things come in small packages: Ómama possesses a world of jewelry worth trying on, each piece containing its own unique history and mystery.

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