Creed
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Creed is the trademark of an American jewelry manufacturer founded in 1946 in Attleboro, Massachusetts, one of the country's historic centers of jewelry production. The history of the American company Creed Jewelry Co. began immediately after its foundation in 1946 by William Creed, a young jewelry wholesaler in New England whose employer would not support his idea of expanding into more elegant jewelry, so he founded his own company in Attleboro, Massachusetts. In search of suppliers of glass, crystal and rhinestones, Creed traveled to Austria and the Czech Republic to source materials for his designs.
The firm became known for combining fine materials with imaginative, naturalistic and figural motifs. The company mostly produced Catholic rosaries, crosses, high quality amulets and medallions depicting saints, alongside elegant costume jewelry using sterling silver, 12K gold filling, semiprecious stones, crystals and rhinestones. Animal and nature subjects were a recurring theme in its sterling silver pieces, with fish, birds, and other creatures rendered in crisply textured metal, often finished with small applied details such as gold plating or tiny stone accents. Pieces from the workshop were traditionally marked "Creed Sterling silver" on the reverse, a signature collectors look for when authenticating vintage examples.
Creed jewelry remains popular with collectors of mid-twentieth-century American costume and sterling silver jewelry because of its high manufacturing quality and inventive figural designs at a time when much costume jewelry was mass-produced with less craftsmanship. The company was sold in 1989, and by 2011 its successor, Christian Brands of Phoenix, Arizona, continued producing Christian-themed jewelry and rosaries, meaning the original Attleboro-era pieces bearing the Creed mark are now regarded as a distinct and desirable vintage category in their own right.
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