Yesterdays Treasures Today Dot Com: craftsment of Gablonz

Friday, 3 December 2010

Wal Mart Button Buys Could Make You Money On Ebay

It is not often that something you could have bought in Wal Mart can end up making you money on ebay.

Vintage buttons can be big sellers on ebay and may make you some extra money to help cope with Black Friday blues. Searching yard sales and garage sales can net you big money if you know what to look for.

Bakelite was made mostly in buttons, very little was made into vintage costume jewellery. Carved glass, like those shown above and below are tiny works of art worth grabbing at your next yard sale.

Buttons are much more than just a way to close clothes. Sometimes they are tiny works of art, especially when you have a look through grans button box. I especially love this Bohemian Czech glass button in the shape of a fly.

Older people tend to cut off buttons from a discarded garment and keep them in a 'button box'. The button above is an old rhinestone button from Bohemia and was found on a flea market treasure hunt. Buckles are also highly sought after, especially in the Art Deco style and made from mother of pearl or bakelite.

The history behind buttons – and the type of materials used – is truly fascinating. It is worth remembering that until the 1880’s all buttons were cut and shaped by human hand, no matter what the material. Antique and vintage buttons are often overlooked and yet can be worth money.

Glass buttons on top of metal (usually brass) shanks, were made in a part of Bohemia called the Iser Mountains - since the 1700’s. The industrious and innovative Bohemians started making lamp worked glass buttons during the1830’s (some sources would say even earlier).

With little or no costume jewellery available; for the masses, buttons were often the nearest thing to costume jewellery that most people could afford during the 1800’s. Below is a cut steel button made in England around 1800.

It was not until the late 1820’s when the skill of joining the brass shank to the glass/composition top was perfected, that button production became a significant contributor to the economy of Bohemia.

My sources say that the manufacturer Josef Scheibler developed glass (properly called composition as it contained more than just glass), in the 1820’s. This specific composition allowed the metal and glass mix to bond well without the worry of the glass cracking off the metal base, once it cooled.

Documents tells us that the Jackel company was the first manufacturer in Gablonz to market this type of button on a large scale, but that it was not until 1825. These buttons below are called 'Dorset Buttons' being made in Dorset in SW England and are highly collected today.

The button industry exploded around 1860 when fashions insisted that buttons were an important part of a garments style and demand increased significantly. But still this was just before modern plastics were invented, so the likes of wood (as seen in the half an Austrian hat button in the image below right) and mother of pearl or shell (as shown in the middle of the image below) were popult.

With this expansion, production of buttons in this area was concentrated in three main places - Wiesenthal, Gablonz and Morchenstern. But still the mainstay of buttons were natural materials. These buttons below are from Austria and were made by hand from the horn of the Red Deer which is native to the dense forests in Bohemia and Austria.

With demand still increasing, huge technical changes were implemented during the 1870’s. Buttons soon appeared with loop shanks and metal back plates allowing a more secure bond between metal and glass.

From around 1870 press moulded buttons could be made without the requirement for extra cutting and polishing because the because of a general improvement in the machinery used, and more exact moulds were available. Buttons were often ‘fire polished’ in the same way as beads.

Up until this time (1870) the majority of glass buttons made were black. After this time fashion demanded the same type of button but in other colours of glass. This stimulated the industry to provide a wider range of colourful glass buttons.

Fashion caused a very fickle and inconsistent trade, the demand for different types of buttons was rarely constant. There were periods when demand was consistently high, (during 1865-1895) and at this time four new factories producing buttons were built.

Sunday, 28 November 2010

How To Spot Fake Czechoslovakian Bohemian Vintage Jewellery

Genuine vintage Czechoslovakian jewellery has a huge number of admirers and collectors worldwide. Nothing looks so good on a vintage summer dress than a perfect Bohemian brooch or string of Czech crystal beads. Or perhaps one of the increasingly rare pieces as shown above and below (from my personal collection).

About twenty years ago, it was obvious what was genuinely vintage Czechoslovakian (more correctly called Bohemian), for it is almost instantly recognizable at a glance, or rather used to be.

In case anyone still thinks that genuine Bohemian crystal necklaces come in only topaz or dark topaz, I am including some of my rarer pieces to make my point.

It used to be that antique dealers of 'smalls' (ie small items including jewellery) used to derisively refer to Bohemian crystal as 'brass and glass'. They soon changed their tune when these pieces started fetching more than three figures in auctions.

Now the waters are rather ‘muddied’ with a whole bunch of 'crafters', buying vintage Czech findings (the metal parts) and the stones, and making up what most of them are calling ‘genuine vintage Czech’ jewellery.

I call these 'wannabe' items Frankenstein Fakes. They are a hybrid, and again at a glance, it is often easy to detect them, if you are experienced, or follow a few guidelines.

The biggest giveaway that they are fake vintage, is that they often have asymmetrical (or unequal) dangles, and the motifs are more Chinese than Czech, with many over-embellished dragons and butterflies. Here is a classic example of a Frankenstein Fake :

THIS IMAGE ABOVE IS OF A FRANKENSTEIN FAKE

Note the sideways on butterfly, the awful unbalanced design with the massive pink crystal dumped at the end of a wayward and misbegotten necklace.

Whilst the seller claims that the findings come from a deserted warehouse in what is now the Czech republic, ALL of these elements, the beads, the metal parts, the chains and the crystals are ALL available to buy and the leading seller is the big bad EBAY.

If something is branded as Rolex or Gucci, Ebay are almost compelled to take action against fakes rather than face years and millions in legal costs.

With Bohemain fakes, and unscrupulous sellers, there is no one left to defend the intellectual or design rights for the unsung Bohemian craftsmen of past centuries.

But of course, there is nothing wrong with crafters making their own versions of ‘Czech’ jewellery, with vintage components, often bought from newly discovered old stock. But to name them genuine vintage Czech is misleading and inaccurate, but of very difficult to prove, if the seller refuses to be honest or has been mislead themselves.

Another way of spotting these fakes of the vintage jewellery world is the designs. They are very often miles away from 'classic' Czech and often combine motifs and colours which the Bohemian craftsmen of days gone by would never ever have used.

THIS IMAGE ABOVE IS OF A FRANKENSTEIN FAKE

This hideous monstrosity shown above, with the profile of an Egyptian and the head below it, is a classic example of fake overkill. Presumably the seller has realized that genuine Egyptian pieces of Bohemian origin, produced around the time of the discovery of the tomb of King Tut do command high prices.

But not in a Bohemians worst nightmares would an Egyptian inspired necklace ever have looked like this.

This seller claims "Items are recently imported from Czechoslovakia, they were made between 1915 and 1930 by the Gablonz Jewelry Company."

Whether this seller is being ignorant or deceptive is hard to tell. But at present she (based in the USA) has more than thirty of these Frankenstein Fakes up for sale.

I have now posted two images as examples of Frankentstein Fakes, all in a small size. ALL of the other examples are from Bohemia and all of them are from my personal collection. There are plenty more which will be photographed and added here over time. And yes, some do feature butterflies and Egyptian themes.

In the interests of balance, I should say that there is only one example I have ever seen, which really did look like an original old Bohemian necklace but the seller was upfront and honest about the genesis of the necklace. Had she not been, I would have been hard pushed to tell the difference at first glance.

The style was correct, the colour was correct, and the materials were correct. The only giveaways were that the clasp was modern gold plated, a spring ring, and rather small for the size and weight of the necklace. Another clue was that the thread used was modern 'tiger -tail'.

But how is a novice collector, who maybe was not around twenty years ago, or who only just discovered the wonder of Bohemia and Czech jewellery to know what is genuine and what is simply fake?

There are very few books on the market detailing the production of Czech jewellery. Those I have are extremely interesting, and detail just how the artisans of Bohemia missed out big-time on being recognised for what they were, pioneers and craftsmen of great worth to the vintage costume jewellery business. In my view, the author is very methodical but is not a native English speaker, so much of the facts come over as garbled.

There are other ways that Bohemian or Czech vintage costume jewellery is faked, and that she be the subject of my next post.

Just be warned and AVOID any glitzy over the top jewellery which is stamped 'Lillien' especially if they are being sold by someone who lives in France.