1930s

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…

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…

USSR Building

This brooch is made of glass (the red background) with an overlay of chrome. On the back there is a rather poor-quality pin, reminiscent of a safety pin. The brooch was probably made as a souvenir from the Paris Expo in 1937. The Paris Expo was held between 25th May to 25th November 1937, just…

Cupid

This little brooch is from the 1930s. It is not a valuable brooch, it is made of ‘white metal’, the term given to items not made of silver and decorated with enamel and marcasites. The enamel is not of particular quality. I think it is probably British, but it has no markings so I can’t…

Recycle Upcycle

What is special about this pair of brooches? On the face of it, nothing. So why have I chosen these two brooches to feature as a Brooch of the month? Well, let me tell you their story. They started life as a pair of dress clips, made in the 1930s from plastic and decorated with…

Florida

This month’s brooch is by the Florida artist Olive Commons. Olive was already an established artist when she moved to Florida with her husband Arthur in the early 1930s. The story goes that Olive’s new house had windows on all sides looking out over the iconic Florida landscape. As a present for a friend Olive…

Flower Cart

This dainty brooch is made of silver with marcasite and enamel decoration. The little wheels spin round and the brooch is designed as a three-dimensional piece. The canopy of the cart comes out from the main part of the design. Most brooches are designed ‘flat’ but adding a third dimension adds depth and interest. Marcasite…

Grasshopper Weather Vane

Guglielmo Cini was born in 1903 in Italy and arrived in the USA at the age of 17 already an accomplished jeweller and silversmith. His talents were soon recognised and he founded the Cini company in 1922 in Boston Massachusetts. The company specialised in silver jewellery with an emphasis on sculptural design. Cini silver jewellery…

Romeo and Juliet

To celebrate Valentine’s Day this brooch is from the 1930s and depicts Shakespeare’s lovers Romeo and Juliet in the balcony scene in Act Two when Romeo scales the forbidden garden of Juliet’s house to woe her. The brooch is French. There are no markings on the brooch so how do I know this? The French…

Domino

I call this brooch my domino brooch, I do realise it’s not a true domino. It is made of Lucite with diamante. The brooch is probably American but there are no marks. The pin has been secured by carefully drilling into the Lucite, this takes skill and nowadays manufacturers will just glue fixings and pins…