I meant to post this a couple of months ago. It’s another addition to my gallery of Andreas Daub jewellery, and has been sitting in my VintagePointUK Etsy shop ever since. I think you’ll agree it has a Finnish look to it, reminiscent of pieces by Elis Kauppi. The main di5fference is that it’s rhodium plated, something you don’t often find on Scandinavian mid century jewellery.
This huge lot of rings and other jewellery items. Some really nice pieces in there, including a deliciously chunky sterling silver moonstone ring, a Native American silver and turquoise ring, and a John Hart Iona silver Celtic brooch.
If you fancy a splurge, I’m offering 25% off to all readers of this blog – just enter coupon code BLOG25 at the checkout. Minimum purchase is £5, and the closing date is Sunday May 13th.
Here is a link to the coupon code – click on it, and the 25% discount will automatically be applied at the checkout.
Last Saturday I went to Canterbury for a bit of retail therapy. Of course, I just had to do the rounds of the charity shops, one of which produced this lovely brooch:
I saw that it was stamped with “925” on the back, and when I got it home I realised that it actually had a full British hallmark. However, the hallmark is very blurred – it’s basically two illegible blobs, followed by a lower case letter “e”. For all British assay offices, this corresponds to the year 2004.
If I wanted to sell this beauty on Etsy I wouldn’t be able to do so for another six years, because according to Etsy’s rules an item needs to be at least 20 years old before it can be classed as vintage. Ah well, it might have to join my own collection for a while then. It’s a hard life.
I found this lovely brooch for a pound at the local church jumble sale. I’m guessing it’s continental silver but there are no hallmarks. Sadly, the pin has broken off, leaving two stumps – one being the clasp (itself missing a roller catch) and the other being the hinge where the pin was attached. The original pin would have been riveted/soldered into the hinge and there’s no way that I could have replaced it myself. So I’ve converted the brooch into a pendant, by removing the safety wire and using the loop at the top as a bale. I also cut off the clasp with a pair of pliers, and filed the stump down so that it was smooth. From the front, you would never know that this was once a brooch.
I sold a bangle in my Etsy shop the other day. It was black and white enamel, and was by Michaela Frey. This bangle was responsible for a significant percentage of my shop’s traffic and had over 100 favourites by the end of its stay there, so I was kind of sorry to see it go! I hope its new owner will love it though.
However, the day the bangle left the country, I found this in a local charity shop:
It’s stamped on the back with “Michaela Frey” and a copyright symbol and was probably made in the 1980s shortly after the death of its namesake. It has a languid, Art Deco feel to it – reminds me of those old fashioned tea rooms with home-made scones, strawberries and a trio of violinists in the corner.
Michaela Frey was an Austrian enameller who founded a jewellery company in the early 1950s. She died in 1980, but the company still lives on under the name Frey Wille, the “Wille” part coming from the CEO Friedrich Wille and his wife Simone.
Further reading:
For a couple of minutes when my eyes lit on this lovely fellow (below), I thought I’d literally struck gold. However, on closer examination he’s almost certainly NOT made of real gold, just gilt. For a start, the pin is several shades darker than the rest of the brooch. And if you look reaaaally closely at the bar and the spider’s legs, you’ll see tiny irregularities in the gilt coverage/shading. But the amethyst stone looks real enough, and judging by the style (bar brooch with an old-fashioned C-clasp), the brooch is at least 100 years old. Creepy-crawly themed jewellery was huge in the Victorian era, and this handsome arachnid is typical of the breed.
Selling vintage jewellery as I do, I struggle with a perennial problem: how to detach emotionally from the pieces I find, and actually sell them as opposed to keeping them for myself. This issue often comes back to haunt me because I’ve made a rule to concentrate only on selling things that I actually like.
The big orange-stoned beauty shown below is a case in point. With great reluctance, I’ve just put it on sale in my Etsy shop. But it nearly didn’t make it there. The pendant is sterling silver and is set with a faceted orange topaz stone. It’s big, bold and modernistic, and was probably made in the 60s or 70s. There is “925” mark on the bale, plus a maker’s mark – “A*D”. This is the mark of Andreas Daub, a jewellery manufacturer from Pforzheim, south-west Germany, which is still in business today.
Here’s a link if you want to read more about Andreas Daub:
http://www.andreas-daub.com/html/profil_e.htm
I’ve also posted some more pics of Andreas Daub jewellery items below; most of these are available in my shop at the time of writing. More to be added as & when I get my mitts on them.
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