A WEEKEND TRAWL TO A LOCAL ANTIQUES CENTRE TURNS UP SOME INTERESTING PIECES OF ITALIAN JEWELLERY
I like nothing better than to go "antiquing" at the weekends. This might take the form of a visit to a Saturday auction, a trip to an antique centre, a visit to a town where there are loads of charity shops or best of all a mooch round a busy car boot sale where real bargains can be found. Sometimes I come home with nothing at all, but on other occasions the car can be almost full of stuff - some of it destined for our stall in a nearby antiques centre. Our garage is full of items waiting to have value added to them (I like to call it) which means they need cleaning, repairing, restoring, reviving - what ever you want to call it. Jon despairs of the number of objects waiting for such attention and every now and again I have a blitz to make room for more. Am I obsessed I ask myself? I guess some people would call it that, but who can resist a bargain when its under one's nose I also ask? - I know I can't!
A couple of weeks ago we decided on a Saturday morning trip across the Fens - a huge lowland, peaty area surrounding the Wash, marshy in medieval times but drained in subsequent centuries to produce some of the most fertile land in Britain. All sorts of things are grown - everything from cereal crops to flower bulbs and much of the vegetable stock found in Britain's supermarkets comes from this region. Not surprisingly there's a lot of money round here - Fenland farmers can be very rich indeed! All this makes for good pickings in the local charity shops and antiques emporia so its not often that I come home empty handed after a trip to Wisbech, Spalding, Boston or the like. This particular weekend we decided to head off towards Kings Lynn. On the route we'd chosen I knew of a local antiques centre with a number of traders which we'd been to before - I couldn't wait to get hunting!!
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| Our Antiques Centre destination near Holbeach, Lincolnshire |
That Saturday the large centre was crammed with stock. Many of the stalls were full of large pieces of 19th and early 20th century brown furniture - items its hard to find a market for these days, despite the bargain prices. I still can't get my head round the fact that people will pay large sums of money for pieces of furniture given the shabby chic look with a coat of chalk paint and a rub down with coarse sand paper and yet resist the £80 to £120 pounds which would buy a nice Georgian oak or mahogany corner cupboard. Where is the sense in that?
On this trip we were not looking for furniture so on entering the building it was important to try and ignore the plethora of Victorian cabinets and 20th century sets of chairs and concentrate on the smalls. There was also quite a lot of reproduction stuff on some of the stalls, but it was not difficult to filter this out of the reckoning. In one of the aisles I remembered a stall where I'd bought some nice pieces of 20th century costume jewellery and an art deco tin box with jars inside so I made a beeline for that. Disappointingly, on first viewing, I couldn't find a single thing I was interested in so I carried on. Twenty minutes later and it was looking grim - no finds at all!! My motto has been not to give up easily and always to do a second run if the first one yields a blank - so it was another tour round the stalls for a another trawl. Soon I was back at the stand which had drawn my interest in the first place. At the back of the stall was an indifferent looking art deco china cabinet (locked) which the dealer was using to display small items she must have thought would appeal to the light fingered. The top shelf yielded a blank - no items of interest there. On the middle shelf there were some bits of run of the mill costume jewellery with nothing standing out. It was the bottom shelf or bust. Sitting in the middle of the shelf was a small oval picture frame which piqued my interest and I had to get down (painfully I might add) on my hands and knees to get a better look. On peeking through the glass I recognized it had a decorative coloured border so it was time to get the lady looking after the centre to come and unlock the cabinet.
The little photograph frame (only 6.5 cms from top to bottom) I recognized as being of mid 20th century date and therefore of no great age, but it was its decorative border that was of interest. It had been crafted from Italian micromosaic work - an ancient technique which could be traced all the way back to the Roman period. The term was coined by wealthy 20th century collector Sir Arthur Gilbert.
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| Miniature Photograph Frame 6.5cms tall |
To make an item in micromosaic tiny square shaped rods of coloured glass are chopped in to small cubes called tesserae. These are then carefully crafted in to delicate images of objects, scenes or patterns to produce the desired image.
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The Technique of micromosaic assembly from coloured glass rods.
Here the image is of the Duomo in Florence |
Scenes from the ruins at Pompeii or Roman landmarks were especially popular. Essentially the technique hasn't changed much over the centuries though the quality of the end result has. Compare the difference below between a 19th century brooch crafted in the middle of the 19th century for wealthy Roman visitors and one made for the mass tourist trade in the middle of the 20th century. In the 19th century the quality was much better and the micromosaic work was much closer set, the tesserae were often set in gold or silver and firms like Castellani made pieces for a fairly exclusive market. This type of jewellery, made in workshops in Rome and Florence, was fashionable in the mid 19th century but went out of fashion in about 1870.
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Mid 19th century Micromosaic brooch with a view of the Pantheon
in Rome and mounted on silver with a filigree frame. |
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Mid 20th century mass produced Micromosaic
brooch with floral decoration on a base metal mount. |
As well as the little oval picture frame there were two other items on the bottom shelf of the cabinet -
a pair of clip on ear rings with floral decoration similar to the brooch above and more unusual - an intricate bracelet made from joined together oblong panels allowing flexibility round a lady's wrist. I have to confess of not having seen one of these before so I'm guessing they are quite rare. I have also never seen one with a panel making reference to the place of origin. This one is marked "VENEZIA" in the central panel and was presumably made in Murano - a centre of production for this cheap tourist jewellery.
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| Clip on Micromosaic Ear Rings with floral decoration |
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| Micromosaic bracelet made in Murano, Venice |
The three finds are not rare items, nor are they of high quality of course, but they are becoming collectable and prices have started to rise. I paid £12 for the photoframe, £6 for the ear rings and £15 for the bracelet. I considered these prices to be very reasonable indeed and I would estimate the values at an antique and collectors fair, or even on ebay to be more in the region of £30 - £40 for the frame, £15 - £20 for the ear rings and perhaps in excess of £40 for the bracelet. This is definitely an interesting area for inexpensive collecting and there are bargains to be had as this visit to the Fens has shown. The jury's out at the moment on the final destination for my 3 pieces. I've a mind to keep them for a while before making a decision whether to sell them on. Not that I will be wearing the jewellery myself you understand!!
Thanks for reading and KBO
Until next time
Ian
Photographs of the pieces bought at the Antiques Centre courtesy of Jonathan Hills
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