Fashion Collectables

All this talk of Tiffany & Co and their battle with eBay and so I thought a quick little bit of history might not go amiss. In the antiques business we probably bandy around terms and names more than many others and it can sometimes be confusing. Just say the word 'Tiffany' and everyone kind of knows what you mean, although I've known people who think that it's a French company. In actual fact they were founded in New York in 1837 by Charles Tiffany and two decades later introduced the Sterling Standard to America, which later became the legal standard for sterling silverware. Tiffany quickly gained a reputation for diamonds, watches, silverware and gems; Charles also designed the Tiffany setting where the curved prongs hold a diamond in position on a ring.

It was Charles' son Louis-Comfort who founded the design company who specialized in Favrille glass and became famous for their art nouveau vases, bowels and glass shades. At the turn of the century he switched his attention to jewellery and while the interior design side of the business closed Tiffany & Co continued and is still going strong today.

A friend of mine who is a keen eBay buyer and seller mentioned  an item that's for sale at the Cotswold Auction Company sale on 27 August - it's a vintage Mulberry filofax type organizer. There are several interesting things about this, not least the fact that filofaxes and pocket organizers are becoming far less common as many more people have their diary on their laptop, mobile phone or PDA; so I wonder will these become real collectors items in the future? The second thing that's interesting about the item in the picture is that it is a lot described as - vintage Mulberry brown filofax and assorted costume jewellery. The guide price is £10 -£20 with a buyer's premium of 17.5% plus VAT. My friend tells me that Mulberry items fetch particularly high prices on eBay and so whoever is selling it might have been better to put it on the auction site. However should you chose to buy a new Mulberry Organizer, like the one pictured, it will cost you around £295.

Pocket watches were first made in the second half of the 16th C and originally only had one hand. During the second half on the 18th C they became more available and by the 19th C they were becoming slimmer. It was also during the mid 19th C that the inbuilt winding mechanism was introduced. By the late 19th C the pocket watches made in the greatest number; there were three types: The open faced; the 'hunter' with the hinged flip-up full cover and the 'half hunter' with a circular window in the cover. As the century ended the watches became more complex with the addition of moon-phases and more beautiful with the addition of precious metals and intricate cover designs.

 An Elgin 'Hunter'with a gold-filled case from around 1910

Watches were first worn on the wrist in the early 20th C but they looked like pocket watches with wire straps to hold them around the wearer's wrist. By the end of World War One wrist-watches became much more common and by the 1930s the wrist watch won the battle to become the timepiece of preference.

In The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde’s play, Lady Bracknell does not approve of Mr Worthing; her disapproval is made worse by the fact that he was adopted as a baby after being discovered in a handbag at a railway station.  It causes her to utter the immortal words “A handbag?”  Every actress who has ever said that simple phrase has done so in her own inimitable way.

Well handbags have become extremely popular in recent decades with everyone from fashionista to collectors. The explosion in highly decorative, light hearted, handbags in the 1950s was in part fuelled by an increase in informal occasions; bags from this period and back as far as the 1920s and 30s by notable designers are much sought after. Bags made in Bakelite and Lucite are very popular, but be warned before you buy anything made in Lucite, or some other early plastic material, smell before you purchase. If you get a strong chemical aroma it indicates the beginnings of the material degrading and soon tiny cracks will appear on the surface. To prevent any cracking on your bags keep them away from heat and strong sunlight. Perhaps you should only take them out on a cool evening….