Brooches

  • Heart

    This is a small heart shaped brooch to celebrate Valentines.  Was it given as a love token?  I don’t know.  But I like to imagine a young man presenting the brooch to his sweetheart on St Valentine’s day. It is not valuable, the stones are just glass and are mounted in brass.  But care has…

  • Lady Walking Dog

    There are various versions of this brooch around.  The brooches date from the 1930s and were ‘give aways’ in Vogue if you signed up for an annual subscription.  They are not particularly sophisticated in construction, basically each brooch is pressed out from sheet metal with a simple pin attached.  Original ones have no decoration but…

  • Christmas Pudding

    This Christmas Pudding brooch is made of felt by Lexys Utopia who is based in Nantwich.  Lexys specialises in making felt jewellery, mainly brooches.  This particular brooch was first used as part of the TubeFlash project I did with Transport for London between 2013 and 2015.  It was the brooch for Monument Tube Station. Since…

  • Circle

    This large and impressive Givenchy brooch is from the 1970s.  The brooch is made of metal and glass and is all about texture.  The metal rim has what appears to be a series of embossed links and then there is an inner ring of violet glass and in the centre smoky grey faceted glass.  The…

  • Mackintosh Square

    This is, for me a small brooch.  I usually go for more statement impactful designs.  But this little brooch has a pleasing design, and it came with matching earrings.  I do like a matching set.  I know these days it is seen as not on trend, but who wants to be a slave to the…

  • Stylized Canon

    Those of you who have been following my ‘Brooch of the Month’ posts will know I have a giant spreadsheet of all the brooches in my collection where I log various details about every brooch I own.  I spent some time working out how best to describe the shape of this brooch by Jakob Bengel…

  • Circus Horse

    Dan Kasoff began making jewellery in New York just after WWII ended.  In the beginning Dan Kasoff Inc manufactured pieces which were supplied to the wholesale trade.  It was not until 1950 that the company began marking its pieces with the name Florenza and marketing in their own right.  The name Florenza does not come…

  • Paisley Stylized Leaf

    This brooch is by the designer and maker Jane Adam. I first came across Jane’s work back in 2009 at the Dazzle Exhibition, where I bought a rectangular brooch made of aluminium.  Jane is a renowned exponent of aluminium jewellery, and her work has been exhibited across the world including Japan, USA, Spain as well…

  • Plate

    This is an unusual brooch as it is in fact a miniature painted plate by the ceramics manufacturer Coalport.  It was made in the 1950s.  More commonly ceramic jewellery was in the form of flowers, I spot this type of brooch regularly in charity and vintage shops.  They can be just one flower of a…

  • Dream

    This brooch is made of silver and has a faceted piece of quartz as an accent.  It is by the Finnish jewellery design company Kalevala, established by the Finnish writer Elsa Heporauta in 1935. Elsa was born in 1883 in Puumala where her father ran the local sawmill. In 1907 Elsa married Frans Akseli Heporauta who…