Tag Archive | Arts and Crafts

Some of my Arts and Crafts jewellery

I have a few pieces of British Arts and Crafts jewellery in my shop right now. When I started selling jewellery I had hoped to sell nothing but Arts and Crafts jewellery, but it proved far harder to come by than I had naïvely thought – it is very collectable and so pieces get snapped up quickly and often at prices that are beyond me. I have been lucky to get my hands on a few pieces, though.

Some of the British Arts and Crafts pieces in my Etsy shop, Inglenookery. Click on photo for further details of Arts and Crafts (and Arts and Crafts style or inspired) pieces I have for sale.

Arts and Crafts amethyst ring. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Lovely Arts and Crafts ring, for sale in my Etsy shop. Click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Zoltan White & Co. Arts and Crafts bloodstone ring. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details.

Arts and Crafts Liberty or Liberty-style blister pearl brooch. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photos for details.

Huge seven stone amethyst Late Arts and Crafts ring. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details.

Arts and Crafts blister pearl and sterling silver necklace. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Late Arts and Crafts sterling silver brooch in a letter P, by William Hair Haseler, and hallmarked in 1930. (NOW SOLD).

Late Arts and Crafts art glass and sterling silver floral ring. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Amethyst jewellery

Sep19

I have always had a fondness for amethysts: something about the beautiful violet colour is so appealing. So no surprise that I seem to have accumulated a few pieces of amethyst jewellery for my Etsy shop …

Amethyst and sterling silver pendant, hallmarked Sweden 1970. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Amethyst and sterling silver ring, hallmarked in Birmingham in 1973. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Kultaseppa Salovaara amethyst and sterling silver pendant. A great piece of Finnish design from the 1970s. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Niels Erik From (NE From) amethyst and sterling silver ring. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details.

An amazing amethyst late Arts and Crafts ring, with seven magnificent amethysts. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details.

A stunning Niels Erik From amethyst and sterling silver necklace. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Jugendstil amethyst and 935 silver brooch, with a ginkgo leaf design, possibly by Max Gradl of Pforzheim Germany. This is a great example of early 1900s German Art Nouveau jewellery. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details.

Caged amethyst pendant necklace, by Elis Kauppi of Kupittaan Kulta, Finland. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Arts and Crafts style amethyst brooch, vintage lace pin. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details.

Kultaseppa Salovaara amethyst and sterling silver pendant; a lovely 1970s vintage Finnish piece of jewellery. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Amethyst is the birthstone for February.

A rare early Bernard Instone brooch

Jul18

I am so excited to be able to offer for sale in my Etsy shop a rare early Bernard Instone brooch.

Early Bernard Instone brooch. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD.)

The brooch has a matrix turquoise held in a split / scalloped collet, set within a sterling silver triangular frame filled with handwrought sprays of leaves, flowers and triskeles / trinity knots.

Even though the brooch is not marked, I believe it to be an early piece by Bernard Instone. A very similar piece is currently for sale at Tadema Gallery, and mine bears an uncanny similarity in form, motifs and style of manufacture. The two brooches are undoubtedly by the same hand.

Bernard Instone studied at the Birmingham School of Jewellery at Vittoria Street, part of the Birmingham School of Art, under Arthur and Georgie Gaskin. He worked for John Paul Cooper for a while before opening Langstone Silver Works in Digbeth in 1920. The influence of both the Gaskins and Cooper can be seen in this piece: intricate and ornate floral decorations surrounding semi precious cabochons. Instone went on to develop a rather less busy, more fluid style. This piece is an interesting example of his early work.

I have written a more detailed blog post about Instone here.

UPDATE 19 July 2016: Wow, less than 24 hours in my shop and it sold!

Arts and Crafts cicely (or is it cecily?) leaf motifs

May9

I have quite a few pieces of silver jewellery in my Etsy shop that are inspired by British Arts and Crafts designs, most notably those of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. One of the motifs he and his contemporaries used quite a lot is known as the cicely leaf design – though I often see it written as cecily leaf.

Chalres Rennie Mackintosh design for a stencil to go on the back of a chair, 1902. It features two Glasgow Roses and several cicely leaves. From the collection of the Hunterian Museum.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh design, 1902. It features two Glasgow Roses and several cicely leaves. From the collection of the Hunterian Museum.

Sweet cicely (Myrrhis odorata) is a member of the umbellifer family, similar to cow parsley, Queen Anne’s lace, fennel and wild carrot.

Sweet cicely (Myrrhis odorata). Photo by H. Zell.

Sweet cicely (Myrrhis odorata).

The problem is, the fern-like, divided pinnate leaf of sweet cicely looks nothing like the leaf described as the cicely (or cecily) leaf, with its broad heart-shaped or teardrop-shaped leaf and prominent central rib! I have no idea where the name of the motif came from, but it is in very common use. Maybe it is correctly spelled cecily, and was called after a lady of that name … I’ve had a good old truffle online and I’m none the wiser.

Cicely leaf overlap ring. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage cecily leaf design peridot glass stud earrings. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details.

Vintage cicely leaf sterling silver and peridot glass stud earrings. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh style sterling silver ring with cecily leaf design. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photos for details.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh style sterling silver ring with cicely leaf design. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photos for details. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage Ortak brooch with three cicely leaves. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage jadeite and sterling silver ring with cicely leaf design. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Charles Rennie Mackintosh style vintage brooch with Glasgow Rose and cicely leaves. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage Charles Rennie Mackintosh style brooch with Glasgow Rose and cicely leaves. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details.

Vintage Charles Rennie Mackintosh design pendant with figures and cicely leaf. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

Charles Rennie Mackintosh style necklace with cecily leaves. Made in sterling silver by Carrick Jewellery and hallmarked Edinburgh 1988. For sale: click on photos for details. (NOW SOLD).

But whatever the origins of the motif and its various names, it’s a lovely one that was commonly used.

A Charles Rennie Mackintosh Mockintosh

Apr14

Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) is the most iconic of all Scottish Arts and Crafts designers. Glasgow-born and based Mackintosh was a talented architect, furniture designer, artist, and more. His works have inspired a range of replicas and items inspired by his designs, and these are fondly known as ‘Mockintoshes‘ (I’m a sucker for a bit of word play).

I recently acquired a piece of silver jewellery, a pendant, in a style that I thought was almost certainly Mackintosh, but with a motif I didn’t recognise. The pendant has two turbaned figures with what look like long capes facing each other. They are so stylised that it is easy to look at the design and not see the figures immediately.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh-inspired sterling silver pendant by Malcolm Gray of Ortak. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

I wondered what the inspiration for the piece was. Some internet truffling was in order. Luckily for me I hit pay dirt in the first place I looked: the Wikipedia page on Rennie Mackintosh:

Cabinet designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, in the collections of the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada. Photo by Tony Hisgett.

Going to the Royal Ontario Museum website, I found that the cabinet was designed by Rennie Mackintosh in 1902, and made by Francis Smith and Son in Glasgow that same year. The cabinet is in white painted oak, and the insides of the doors are lined with silver foil inlaid with a design in coloured glass of a woman holding a stylised rose in the design known as the Glasgow Rose. The Museum acquired its example in 1983-4.

More truffling showed that Mackintosh’s original design for the cabinet (accession no GLAHA 41118) is held by the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery at the University of Glasgow. The Hunterian holds a huge collection of material by and related to Mackintosh. The pair of cabinets were designed for Mrs Rowat (the mother-in-law of Mackintosh’s friend and mentor, Francis Henry Newbery) for the living room of her house at 14 Kingsborough Gardens, Glasgow.

Mackintosh had a duplicate pair made for his own home in Glasgow, and this pair is now on display in ‘The Mackintosh House’ in the Hunterian Museum (accession nos GLAHA 41221 and 41222), where they can be seen flanking one of the fireplaces.

As well as featuring the Glasgow Rose, the design also features the heart-shaped leaf motif known as the ‘cicely leaf’ or ‘cecily leaf’. Both motifs were used by Mackintosh and so are often found in Mockintoshes. I’ve written a short blog post on the cicely leaf motif here.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society website.

A Jessie M King necklace

Nov10

Last Sunday the Antiques Roadshow came from RAF Coningsby. It was filmed earlier this summer. One of the items featured was a beautiful Arts and Crafts fringe necklace in its original Liberty case, owned by a very lucky young lady. It features moonstones and baroque pearls, with decorative leaves picked out in blue-green enamel.

Arts and Crafts fringe necklace, c. 1905, in its original Liberty case. I am sure this is designed by Jessie M King.

The expert, John Benjamin, dated it from about 1905, that the blue-green were little blobs of glass set on gold (ie vitreous enamel), and called the pearls blister pearls. He said blister pearls are ‘mis-shapen white pearls, natural pearls’. My understanding (probably incorrect) is that blister pearls are those half-formed things caught under the nacreous skin of the oyster shell, whereas pearls proper, both regularly-shaped and irregularly-shaped, are free within the shell. I am more used to seeing pearls like these — irregularly-shaped proper ‘free’ pearls — described as baroque pearls. He did not attribute a designer and valued it at £3,000.

I think this necklace positively screams out Jessie M King. It’s her style, her colour palette — everything about it suggests it is her design. Jessie’s pieces were usually made with semiprecious stones, and enamel, and she used the enamelled leaf motif extensively.

Jessie M King enamel and blister pearl pendant. The drop is a later replacement, and would originally have been a baroque pearl. The motif is the same as on the necklace above. Sold by HomeFarmCottage on Etsy.

Jessie M King. Opal, peridot, baroque pearl and enamel necklace, c. 1900. Sold by Van den Bosch.

Jessie M King. Opal, peridot, baroque pearl and enamel necklace, c. 1900. Sold by Van den Bosch. Detail.

Jessie M King brooch design for Liberty & Co. Gold, moonstone and enamel. Liberty model number 1800. Sold by Tadema Gallery.

Jessie M King design for Liberty & Co. Gold, sapphire, moonstone and green enamel necklace. Sold by Van Den Bosch.

Jessie M King. Moonstone and enamel necklace.

Jessie M King design for Liberty & Co. Moonstone and enamel necklace. Sold by Van den Bosch.

Jessie M. King for Liberty & Co. Ring, gold, silver, enamel and chrysoprase. Sold by Tadema Gallery.

Jessie M King for Liberty & Co. A silver and gold necklace set with moonstones within borders of blue/green enamelled leaves surrounded by gold wire wirework and gold florets. The silver chain with a gold clasp. British. Circa 1900. Size: Height of drop pendant only 4.4 cm. Width 2 cm. Width across three moonstones 11 cm. Total length around necklace 41 cm. Sold by Van den Bosch.

Jessie M King for Liberty & Co. Turquoise and enamel necklace. Sold by Van den Bosch.

Jessie M King for Liberty & Co. Moonstone and enamel brooch. Sold by Tadema Gallery.

The programme is available on the BBC iPlayer, and the segment runs from 21:00 – 24:07.

I wrote a blog post about Jessie’s jewellery designs a while ago. It has more detail of the life of this fascinating and multi-talented Scottish artist.

She sells sea shells part 2

Jun29

I love nature jewellery, inspired by birds or flowers or animals. And it seems appropriate as beach time is on us that I have a lot of shell jewellery at the moment, either made from shells or depicting them. All are for sale in my Etsy shop: click on the photos for details.

Victorian mother of pearl and abalone necklace. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage shell earrings. (NOW SOLD).

Abalone and sterling silver pendant. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage mother of pearl and onyx cufflinks. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage abalone and stainless steel brooch.

1960s abalone and stainless steel brooch. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage Art Deco mother of pearl dress clip.

Art Deco mother of pearl dress clip. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage abalone heart pendant. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage 835 Portuguese silver bracelet. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage stainless steel and abalone brooch.

1960s stainless steel and abalone brooch. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage Carl M Cohr silver bangle bracelet.

Vintage Danish silver Carl M Cohr bangle bracelet. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage Mexican abalone and silver pendant and chain. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage modernist black abalone ring. (NOW SOLD).

Antique Arts and Crafts blister pearl brooch.

Vintage seed pearl ring. (NOW SOLD).

Vintage Arts and Crafts style pendant with pearl dangle.

Vintage Arts and Crafts style pendant with freshwater pearl dangle. (NOW SOLD).

Shelly, pearly, silvery, nacreous loveliness.

Stoneywell, an Arts and Crafts house

Apr15

Stoneywell is a wonderful Arts and Crafts house built by designer-architect Ernest Gimson (1864-1919) for his brother Sydney in Ulverscroft in the Leicestershire countryside between 1897 and 1899, and lived in by Sydney’s family until 2012. It has been bought by the National Trust and restored to the state it was in in the 1950s, and is now open to the public, opening for the first time ever this spring.

Stoneywell. Photo by Joe Giddens/PA.

Stoneywell, drawn by Ernest Gimson in July 1898.

Stoneywell is in Charnwood Forest, north-west of Leicester, and I know the area well because I grew up in Leicester, and Charnwood Forest and Bradgate Park (‘Braggy Park’) were favourite weekend family walk spots. I’m also familiar with the work of Ernest Gimson, because there were a couple of his houses just around the corner from where I lived in Leicester, Inglewood on Ratcliffe Road and The White House on North Avenue.

Inglewood (1892), a house by Ernest Gimson on Ratcliffe Road. Photo by NotFromUtrecht.

Inglewood (1892), a house by Ernest Gimson on Ratcliffe Road, Leicester. Photo by NotFromUtrecht.

The White House (1898), a house by Ernest Gimson on North Avenue, Leicester. Photo by NotFromUtrecht.

Gimson built several houses at Ulverscroft for his family. Stoneywell is special because it was furnished by Gimson and his furniture-making colleagues the Barnsleys, and as the family never left the house, much of the original furniture remains.

The kitchen at Stoneywell. Photo by Joe Giddens/PA.

The living room at Stoneywell. Photo by Joe Giddens/PA.

The master bedroom at Stoneywell. Photo by Joe Giddens/PA.

Now here’s a little story. When I was about 14, on one of our weekend trips to Charnwood Forest we passed an antiques shop—I can’t remember where it was: Woodhouse Eaves, maybe?—and some of its wares were displayed out on the pavement. My eye was caught by a beautiful chair with a twisted cord seat, and I asked my Dad to stop so I could look at it. I found out how much it was from the shop owner (I think he might have taken pity on me and given me a good price), worked out how many months-worth of pocket money that would be, asked for a sub from my parents, and bought the chair. Luckily our car was big enough to take it home in the back.

I still have it: such a pretty little Arts and Crafts chair. Maybe this is a little fanciful of me, but I like to think it could have been a Gimson or a Barnsley chair, from one of the Gimson houses in the area. Whoever it was made by, I haven’t ever seen another like it. Update December 2016: an extremely knowledgeable Arts and Crafts collector tells me that my chair is by William Birch. At last I know who made it. Thank you, Vanessa!

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National Trust information on Stoneywell.

Scandinavian silver

Apr11

UPDATE May 2017: For Scandinavian silver pieces currently in my Etsy shop, please click here.

I seem to be sourcing more and more pieces of 20th century Scandinavian silver jewellery for my shop. I started off with the idea of stocking early 20th century pieces – English Arts and Crafts, Germanic Jugendstil and Nordic Skønvirke jewellery, but gradually my eye was drawn towards the sleek, minimalist lines of mid century Scandinavian modernist jewellery as well.

A selection of Scandinavian jewellery. Click on photo for details.

A few of the pieces of Scandinavian jewellery for sale in my Etsy shop. Click on photo to see my current selection of Scandinavian jewellery and silver objects.

At the moment I have 40 pieces of Scandinavian silver for sale in my Etsy shop, and more to come that I haven’t got round to listing yet!

Pretty in pink

Jan8

I was never a girly girl and so pink isn’t my top colour (give me orange any day). But I have a couple of pieces of rose quartz jewellery in my Etsy shop at the moment that I really, really like: the colour is so delicate and light, and the crystal so clear that I find both immensely appealing.

Skonvirke rose quartz and silver ring. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

I love this Skønvirke ring, which dates from dates from c. 1910—1920. Skønvirke (often anglicised to Skonvirke, and meaning ‘beautiful work’) was a Nordic offshoot of the Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts movements, with its artistic centre in Denmark. Georg Jensen and Evald Nielsen were perhaps its most famous proponents. This ring isn’t signed, but is unmistakably Skønvirke in style, with the free-form globular and organic silver designs on the shoulders of the ring, and the beautiful split collet. Even though it is almost 100 years old, it looks amazingly modern and funky. The natural striations within the quartz add interest and life.

Rose quartz Arts and Crafts pendant necklace, probably German. For sale in my Etsy shop: click on photo for details. (NOW SOLD).

The second piece is an Arts and Crafts pendant necklace, probably made in Germany and dating from just a little earlier than the ring, ie from between 1900 and 1910. It seems likely that originally the necklace had two of the dangling teardrop shaped pendants below the circular cabochon, on single chains of differing lengths, giving an asymmetrical appearance. At some point in the past one of the teardrops was lost, and the necklace reconfigured so that the remaining teardrop hung centrally below the cabochon. There is some damage on one side of the circular cabochon, with fractures, and a crack and chip in the teardrop, but these aren’t too noticeable given the overall striated appearance of the quartz crystal. It is still a very pretty and delicate piece of jewellery, and perfect for someone who loves a piece with a hundred years’-worth of story.

Lovely as they are, I’m not a Barbie Girl just yet. This is as close to pretty in pink as I am likely to get:

The Psychedelic Furs’ 1981 album Talk Talk Talk was one of the soundtracks to my early ’80s …