Annies Antiques Blog

An amazing Victorian Micro mosaic brooch I just had to show you. It is in the shape of a cross. This is set with 5 pictures - grapes an anchor, two flower panels and a central bird. The reverse has a hook which I believe was originally used to wear this as a pendant with the brooch clip being added in the later 1800s. Note that the triangular section on the right hand side is missing its tiles otherwise this is in excellent condition. It measures about 4 cms wide Currently this antique brooch is for sale by AntiquesAvenue on eBay with a very reasonable start price. More on Micro Mosaics in vintage brooches coming soon

You can often find older brooches , especially Victorian brooches, set with porcelain plaques which have been painted or printed. These brooches are quite decorative and very collectible . Try looking out for some with classical European paintings: Hand painted with Birds brooch : Or how about a collection of hand painted vintage floral brooches? These three types of vintage brooch all have the inset porcelain plaque in common. They vary in age with the top one being mid- Victorian , the central one being later Victorian and the lower one being an Edwardian brooch. All should be treated with reasonable care as porcelain chips easily and the pictures would come off if they are subjected to harsh cleaning materials. How should you clean them - hopefully a gentle wipe with a soft dry cloth. If this doesn't work a well wrung out damp cloth or just a touch of washing up liquid if really necessary. Do not let the damp get to the setting if you can help it as most likely the settin

Just a few pictures of antique and vintage enamel brooches to add to the previous blog post. Do you have any more to add? I normally have a selection of vintage silver enamel brooches available.

Enamel brooches are so very colourful especially vintage silver and enamel ones. Just take a look at the pictures in this blog post to see some of the variety available. There are several different types of enameling but they seem to have one basic thing in common - they are a coloured glass applied to the silver. It seems that the glass is powdered and they applied to the base material before being fired at very high temperatures. The base material is often silver but can also be ceramic or glass or other metals. The different types of enameling seem in Vintage brooches include; Engine turned enamel, cloisonne, champleve, plique-a jour enamel and hand painted enamels. All of these types of enameling add to the desirability of any vintage brooch. It was particularly common in the Art Nouveau era and is one of the features of Scandinavian silver jewellery. Some care needs to be taken with your vintage enamel brooches as the enamel can chip and crack. It is difficult to repair the enamel

Do you have an old vintage brooch which is broken and can no longer be worn? Perhaps its beyond having the catch repaired? I know I have several, they get kept because they are beautiful and I dont have the heart to just throw them away. Sadly these pretties never see the light of day. Recently I came across a designer who is re-cycling old brooches into wonderful and wearable new pieces. Tayler Claudio is a jewelry designer who takes pride in reburbishing vintage items and making them anew. Her inspirations range from broken jewelry to things others consider trash. Often, she will find old brooches that people throw out and revamp them so that others can fall in love with them again. The picures show photos of her work with brooches. You can find Tayler's brooches and other jewelry designs in her Etsy shop: http://www.randomocity.etsy.com/

Here is a material seen in brooches of the later Victorian and Edwardian eras but seemed to fade from popularity by 1920 - it surprises me that Goldstone was not used for longer as it really does sparkle wonderfully. It is actually a type of glass made with thousands of tiny copper inclusions. For some reason I always seem to find goldstone set into Nanny Pins as in the photo below:

Whitby Jet comes from Whitby on the North East coast of England. It is a natural material which has been formed over millions of years from coal. This is the finest of the forms of jet and was greatly sought after. Whitby jet was carved and shaped into most forms of Victorian Jewelry and very often seen in brooches. Its very black colour suited the fashion for mourning Jewellery which was set by Queen Victoria following the death of her husband Prince Albert. Whitby jet is: Light weight & can be highly polished or left matt. It has a subtle coal smell when you rub it hard and leaves a brown coloured trace if you rub it lightly on a rough surface ( please be very careful not to do this with precious antiques!)Another way of identifying real jet is to see how the brooch fastening has been attached. With real jet you will often see that it has been drilled or riveted into the reverse of the jet rather than stuck on to the back. Care of Whitby Jet Brooch Your Jet brooch should not need