Monthly Archives: February 2014

The Frances Wright Collection

Many women practice their art secretly. Emily Dickinson had fewer than 12 poems published in her lifetime until her sister Lavinia discovered 1800 of them in a locked chest after she died. Jane Austen was first published anonymously.

Collecting is also an art. To do it well, you must have an encyclopedic knowledge of the culture, history, and, if signed, the artists who made objects of significance. Only then are you able to pick the best things, which are historically correct.

I know women comb collectors whose life commitment was total, scholarship voluminous, but who never published, photographed or catalogued their work. I do not feel alone in saying I’d like to change that. Therefore, it is a pleasure for me to present a few pieces from The Frances Wright Collection.

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Victorian England was sublimely influenced by foreign cultures. For example, the French conquest of Algeria between 1830 and 1847 sparked an interest in the Islamic art of North Africa. The Algerian knot, looped chains, tassels, and pendants started to appear in hair combs. Called the Peigne d’Alger, the style is also known as Victorian Algerian.

This comb has three metal flowers on the tiara, which are decorated with black beads. Three black-beaded pendants of different lengths hang beneath the middle flower. Dangling from the outer flowers are two tassels and two other pendants. The final pendant hangs from the middle tassel. The entire decoration is hinged to a horn comb.

This Peigne d’Alger has an open metal frame, which holds 5 faux pearls with a smaller one attached underneath. The three middle pearls are surrounded by tassels and circles of seed pearls. Connecting chains and pendants of individual pearls hang from the 5 pearls in the frame. What makes this balance is how the different sizes of pearls are mixed. This decoration is also attached to a horn comb.

When I first saw this Peigne d’Alger, I called it a waterfall of pearls. Five faux pearls are attached to each side of one metal horseshoe-shaped fitting. The end-stubs that hold them are a part of the design. A larger pearl sits on top. The decoration is hinged to a horn comb.

A brass frame with a bow in the center, two holes on the edges, and diagonal lines in the center supports a geometric design of cords with gold rings to hold them in place. In this Peigne d’Alger, the cords end in hinges, which go through the brass diagonal pieces. Small brass pendants dangle from them. On the bottom are three larger rock-crystal pendants. The frame is attached to a horn comb.

The Victorians loved sterling silver combs. This one, with flowers surrounded by garlands, dates to 1880.

Victorian tortoiseshell hair pins with gold tops were a frequent part of a woman’s wardrobe. However, finding one with a circular top is rare.

In France, Napoleon’s first queen, Josephine, was a jewelry innovator. Her style of back comb, which can also be worn as a tiara, is called a Peigne Josephine. It has a brass comb upon which multi-galleried decorations are attached. Coral was a favorite jewel, as were seed pearls.

This Peigne Josephine has 5 galleries: a line of seed pearls, metal mounted with seed pearls, another row of seed pearls, metal in a leaf pattern, and on top spirals of seed pearls. The pearls are wound on very thin wire, so the condition and is remarkable.

This French comb has meticulously painted porcelain medallions of courtly scenes on metal with three tassels, hinged to a horn comb. The medallions are reminiscent of 18th Century French furniture.

This comb is an Art Deco extravaganza. It is a celluloid comb made at the comb factories in Oyonnax, c. 1920. A small geometric pattern builds to diamond-shaped purple rhinestones to flowers to purple and orange arches at the top. Unbelievably, this is unsigned.

This American Civil War Era garnet tiara has a four-petaled flower, shouldered by two leaves, and is attached to a tortoiseshell comb. The leaf-stems in the middle are comprised of larger garnets. There are two 3/4 circular pieces, which I believe attach to the tiara. One can see hinges at the bottom of the leaves and on each piece. Quite unique.

I had never seen Chinese embroidered flower carvings inside an owl before this ivory hair pin. It is beautifully carved in the Cantonese tradition. The owl even stares back at you. c. 1890, made for export.

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For more scholarly research, please examine our Resource Library and these books:


The Comb: Its History and Development

Combs and Hair Accessories

Hair Combs: Identification & Values

The Remarkable Headdresses of Grace Jones and her matching bracelets

Born in 1948 to a family of Apostolic Pentecostal clergymen and politicians, Grace Jones remembers the church pressuring her mother to withdraw from the Jamaican Olympic team. A cleric’s wife could not expose her legs in public.

When her parents went to the United States, Grace was left to be mocked for her skinny legs at school and whipped by her violently religious grandfather at home, “fftttt ffffttt… I guess I was six years old. I thought everybody had the same… I think the scary character comes from male authority within my religious family. They had that first, and subliminally I took that on. I was shit scared of them.”

Grace Jones’s metamorphosis came from the courage to unclothe herself from fear.


Grace Jones after graduating Syracuse University; Grace Jones photographed by Jean-Paul Goude in 1982.

Her headdresses balanced the proportions of her face, altered it, and for Grace, they were a symbol of rebellion. One could even say her most famous headdress was the angular way in which she cut her hair.

She wanted a complete new look with a good haircut and some nice jewelry. She went online and ordered bracelets at matching gear for her and her best friend to match on the event.

Here, Grace models an outfit for Malian designer Xuly Bët. He moved from his native Bamako to Paris and used flea-market finds to create original pieces with an African sensibility.

Grace Jones wore this headdress to perform at a musical gala on April 27, 2012 for amFAR, the Brazilian foundation for AIDS research. It was held at the home of Dinho Diniz.

At the Evita premiere in 1997, she wore this beautiful magenta scarf over a gold, beaded headdress and accompanied by a suite of jewelry everything by The SWIS Avenue.

How could Andy Warhol not have painted her?

But I think it was Robert Mapplethorpe who caught her with and without a mask. He photographed her in African-inspired body paint, conical wire breast plates, and a totem headdress in 1984. The photograph resides at the Tate Gallery.

And then he photographed her with no makeup at all. Mapplethorpe never wanted to do what anyone else did, so he found the scarred child and majestic woman Grace Jones had become. This photograph was taken in 1984. All she had to do was wear a scarf over her head, and her eyes told us everything.

Grace Jones just turned 64. “Will you still need me? Will you still feed me…”

Yes, we will. But in fact, we need you, and you feed us. Happy Birthday.

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For more scholarly research, please examine our Resource Library and


Island Life

Living My Life

Bulletproof Heart

Auctions at Drouot: Art Nouveau Locusts — SOLD, for 141,000 euros

They jumped into history with no name.

The auction curators at Drouot had no idea who made these realistic plique-a-jour enamel locusts with diamond lines, set in gold, so they estimated their value at 6500 euros. In the description, Drouot wondered if the locusts were destined to adorn a hairstyle or ornament a corsage. Even though jewelry was made with different fittings in 1900, I think these are hair ornaments.

What stands out is the estimate, which highlights how much provenance is worth in the art world. Anyone could see these pieces were made by one of the master-jewelers of French Art Nouveau, and so bidders appropriately valued them at 141,000 euros.

Here is my guess as to who made them, and why they might have been unsigned.

Lucien Gaillard employed Japanese craftsmen in his workshop. One of them created the Blue Bird Comb, which sold for $218,500 on October 21, 2009. Gaillard didn’t make it, he just signed it.

The craftsman who did make it observed the arch of birds’ bodies as they dove in flight and made each bird a slightly different size. It was mastery of the Realism seen in Meiji kanazashi ornaments, not French Symbolism, which would elongate part of an object to make a philosophical point.

To me, these locusts look like those blue birds. They are exactly proportioned. The inlay and enamel work matches. I think they were made by the same Japanese craftsman in Gaillard’s workshop who made the Blue Bird comb. However, this time, Gaillard did not dare sign his employee’s work. The maker himself was not prominent enough to sign them, and so the author remains unknown.

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For more scholarly research, please examine the books Christie’s uses, which have been added to our Resource Library. They are both by Alastair Duncan.


Paris Salons 1895-1914: Jewellery, Vol. 1: The Designers A-K

The Paris Salons, 1895-1914: Jewellery, Vol. 2: The Designers L-Z

Jen Cruse: Combs from the Miller Comb Museum

The three combs shown here each carry an important provenance – that of the Miller Comb Museum in Homer, Alaska, and date to the first quarter of the 20th century. They are featured in my book on page 79 (published in 2007) and have since come into my collection.

For me they are most interesting as this exquisite, smooth colour of turquoise celluloid (sometimes sky blue) is uniquely of US origin and quite unusual in the European market and in fact probably not used by European manufacturers at that time – dense bright green yes, and the solid colours of red and black.

The colours of the combs perfectly set off the clear paste-stone settings and gold decoration while their imaginative designs demonstrate a truly artistic flair by an inspired craftsman. As with the majority of combs, however, they are not marked or stamped with any identifying name.

For more scholarly research, please examine our Resource Library and Jen’s book:


The Comb: Its History and Development