Category Archives: American Hair Comb

The Hair Comb Market

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Are many beautiful things for sale, each with their own story, that condense post into one subject is difficult. So I have buffet of things today. Just click the picture or link see more details about each item.

In Sotheby’s Unsold category:

On 6 December 2002, this Henri Vever gold, enamel, and horn hair comb was estimated at $8,000 to $12,000, but did not sell.

vever

On 13 June 2000, this French gold, enamel, and diamond Eugenie comb, c. 1870, was estimated between 6,000 to 8,000 GBP, but also did not sell.

eugeniecomb

Sotheby’s Upcoming Auction:

Up for auction on 14 November 2014 is brass Alexander Calder hair pin, c. 1940 (Calder Foundation Archive number: A16974). Estimate $50,000 – $70,000. To me, this comb looks like a female body wired into a frame. The estimate is consistent with the Calder market, and the interested to know what it fetches.

calder1

Will it appreciate in value, as did Calder’s silver “Figa” hair comb?

“Figa” in Slavic and Turkish cultures is hand gesture made to represent male or female sexual organs. The first and second fingers wrap the thumb. It could in response to money request or plea for physical labor. In Ancient Rome, the gesture was ward off evil spirits.

Calder gifted it artist Frances J. Whitney, c. 1948 (Calder Foundation Archive number: A22629). It could just see her wearing it with a geometrically cut black dress to charity ball, with no one else knowing what it meant but her.

On 15 November 2006, it purchased from Whitney estate for $57,000. On 14 November 2013, that buyer sold for 137,000.

alexandercaldercomb

That Live Auctioneers, another comb caught my attention. It is Russian, c. 1908-1917, silver, and made Fabergé work master Anders Michelson (marked AM). The comb has eight tortoiseshell prongs and a beautiful hinge that fits over to entire top. Michelson used niello, black mixture of copper, silver, and lead sulphides, to inlay the dogs and floral pattern on tiara. The auction starts on 13 November 2014, and the opening bid is €300.

dogs

Michael Backman Gallery

Michael Backman Ltd. this selling pair of gold and at gilded silver-filigree dragon hair pins from China’s Qianlong Period (1735-1796). They have dragon heads, each, which have turquoise cabochon. Openwork hair ornaments were known as “tongzan” and were worn from Ming Dynasty onwards.

chinesedragonhairpins

Also on sale this comb from Solomon Islands. It is faa, or man’s woven comb from the Kwaio People, Malaita, Solomon Islands. Woven from yellow-orchid and coconut-palm-frond fibres, the comb was dyed with that geru root. Its teeth are made of fern wood.

solomonislands

The last lot to feature from Michael Backman is jaw-dropping collection of 38 Indonesian gold ornaments, c. 800 AD. It is largest set of gold regalia ever collected for statue in Central Java, Indonesia. Their script on chest cord translates as “‘The weight of pailut with the diadem: 2 suvarṇa, 1 māṣa, 2 kupaṅ’”

Indon_Gold-750x475

Some Lovely Things on E-Bay

Never dismiss E-Bay. A Māori Paikea comb with ivory patina to-die-for was listed by God-Save-Whom for $9.95 with no reserve. The description was “Possibly African.”

It is There are 6 bids on it, including 2 experienced bidders. It’s real tortoiseshell. As printing, are 3 days and 11 hours this auction.

It is Their seller thinks French. It could French or Edwardian English because jewelers in both countries made these types of pins. The auction has 4 days to go.

Of authors, Miriam Slater, as selling this It is rare, it is real, and I’d get my hands on it if I could.

Choosing one amongst many beautiful things is difficult. Mustn’t we just have them all.

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To have fun researching more items like these please consult our Resource Library and these books:

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Gold Jewellery of the Indonesian Archipelago
Calder Jewelry
Ethnic Jewellery and Adornment

Plumes: The Creative Museum at the Musée des Arts d’Afrique et d’Asie

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In its second collaboration with the Museum of African and Asian Arts in Vichy, The Creative Museum has been invited to participate in the exhibition, PLUMES.

Human fascination with birds begins when their freedom of flight captures our imaginations. We watch birds soar and glide freely, as their beautiful, feathered wings catch gusts of air. Can we explore birds’ connection to the human soul in other cultures?

The exhibition PLUMES investigates five civilizations: India, China, the Ivory Coast, Papua New Guinea, and North America to show how art reflects human reverence for each culture’s emblematic bird.


Click on the image to go to the exhibition

From India: The peacock is India’s national bird and holds an important place in Hindu epic poetry and mythology. In Rajasthan’s miniature paintings, peacocks provide companionship to wistful nayikas. They are heroines in the Natya Shastra, written by Bharata, c. 100 BC. The Creative Museum’s silver-gilded comb comes from Rajasthan. The well contains perfume, which drips into the user’s hair, and is adorned with two peacocks.

From China: Tian Tsui is the art of cutting and gluing the kingfisher bird’s iridescent blue feathers to gilt silver. The feathers are so small, it is a painstaking task. The term literally means “dotting with kingfishers” and has been a traditional Chinese art for 2000 years. The Creative Museum’s magnificent diadem uses tian tsui. The flowers are topped with three symbolic child figures with painted bone faces.

From the Ivory Coast: The hornbill kaloa bird is the mythological founder of the Senoufo people. One opportunity for young tribal men is to join the Poro Society, a school where most carvings and masks are made. Statues combine human and animal elements. The bird’s horned beak is elongated, as it touches the fertilized, swollen belly. This comb from The Creative Museum shows the beak-belly relationship, as a man wears a kaloa-bird mask, perhaps for an initiation ceremony.

From Papua New Guinea: The Dani People from the Highlands have a fable. Once, a snake and a bird engaged in a great race to decide the fate of human beings. If the snake won, men would shed their skins and live forever. If the bird won, men must die. The bird won. The Creative Museum’s male headdress from the Dani is made of cassowary bone and feathers, crocodile claws, and warthog teeth. It was most likely worn by a warrior.

From North America: The Tlingit are an indigenous tribe who live along the Pacific Northwest coast: now Oregon and Washington in the USA; British Columbia in Canada. Modern-day Tlingit also live in Alaska. Before Christian conversion, they were animists. Their totem poles narrated stories, legends, and myths. The Tlingit have raven clans and eagle/wolf clans. As the eagle’s beak is curved, The Creative Museum’s bone hair pin with a totem pole eye probably belonged to an eagle-clan shaman.

With these five distinct cultural interpretations, The Creative Museum’s contribution to the Plumes exhibit at the Museum of African and Asian Arts in Vichy shows how bird mythology lives on in headdresses around the world.

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For more scholarly research, please examine our Resource Library and The Creative Museum’s publications and these books:


Kingfisher Blue: Treasures of an Ancient Chinese Art
Powerful Headdresses: Africa and Asia
Ethnic Jewellery and Adornment

Kristopher Leinen

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During the Industrial Age, artists rebelled against machine-produced products by hand-crafting exquisite works of art. Today, computer aided design (CAD) is a primary force in industrial production.

However, instead of rebelling, Kristopher Leinen uses Texas Tech’s School of Art CAD-based software to serve his artistic inspirations. He combines technology and hand crafting to create award-winning jewelry.

His “Garden of Eden” hair comb won the 2012 Niche Award in the Student Sculpture to Wear category. The Tree of Knowledge is made from sterling and argentium silver, 14k white and yellow gold, garnets, rubies, and diamonds.

“The comb is worn on the crown of the head as if reaching towards the heavens… This piece was created to empower the wearer… Simultaneously, it is meant to remind the viewer of the lure of temptation,” said Leinen.

Another comb in Leinen’s collection is “Up-Rooted.” It was also made in 2012, using Argentium silver, 18k gold, cocobolo (a tropical hardwood), acrylic, tsavorite garnets, white diamonds, and blue diamonds.

Leinen believes one has to balance concept and craftsmanship in order to give a piece of jewelry its unique voice. “I don’t know if anybody ever achieves it intentionally and purposefully and locks in on it, but through growth and time, I am starting to develop my own language and a way that my pieces can speak for themselves,” he said.

I think his language and the balance in his jewelry is extraordinary. As brooches can also be worn as hair ornaments, I will end this presentation of Leinen’s work with a piece made in 2010, “Fruit-Flower Brooch.” Materials: Brazilian kingwood, pink ivory wood, sterling silver, 14k gold, copper, and brass.

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


Inspired Jewelry
The Sourcebook of Contemporary Jewelry Design
Contemporary Jewelry in Perspective

Stanley Hill, Sr., and Seneca Iroquois Combs

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By Kajetan Fiedorowicz

Many contemporary tribal artists reach to their nations’ historical sources for inspiration, which provides for a certain continuation of tradition. However, they do not always admit that reference. This makes the process of “joining stylistic dots” much harder, but not impossible.

The comb presented below, carved c. 1977 by Stanley Hill, Sr., (Mohawk Clan) is an interesting and competently executed interpretation of an ancient Seneca Iroquois antler comb that dates back to the late 1600s.

This carved and incised comb depicts two wolves, clan symbol of the Wolf Clan. They stay on the roof of a cosmic longhouse that symbolizes the political structure of the Iroquois Confederacy. Within the longhouse, three human figures squat in a so-called “hocker” position, which many women in traditional societies assume when giving birth. However, these figures most probably represent the two eldest brothers of the Iroquois Confederacy, representing the Seneca, Onondaga and Mohawk nations.

Here are two other effigy-related examples from the The Eugene and Clare Thaw Collection, which resides at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, NY.

The first depicts two wolves facing each other without other imagery, and dates c. 1660 – 1675.

The second is a Seneca Horse Effigy Comb, made c. 1670 – 1687 from moose or elk antler. It was found in the 1930s at the Ganondagan State Historic Site, also known as Boughton Hill, in the town of Victor, Ontario County, New York. The museum speculates that the comb’s image of the single horse may relate to the introduction of European horses in Seneca country in the late 1600s. This seminal event turned many tribes into horse cultures.

An excellent piece was found buried with a Seneca shaman woman during the construction of an upscale neighborhood in Toronto. It dates from the late 1600s when the area was the Iroquois city of Teiaiagon (crosses the stream), a land with a river of dangerous rapids. On the comb, engraved lines connect three shapes, or characters — Mishipescheu (a water lynx with the tail of a rattlesnake), a bear, and the shaman. The themes are continuity of man and spirit, and protection.

Last is a comb from my own collection to close this story for today.

An exciting and mysterious World of Combs…

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


The Iroquois Trail: Dickon among the Onondagas and Senecas
The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca
An Address, Delivered Before the Was-ah Ho-de-no-son-ne or New Confederacy of the Iroquois Also, Genundewah, a Poem

Jen Cruse: Stratton Combs

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In 1920, the English company of Jarrett, Rainsford & Laughton Ltd resulted from a merger of two smaller companies, each manufacturing items of inexpensive jewellery and haberdashery goods. However, Stratton Ltd was already owned by Laughtons at the time of the merger and the new company retained the Stratton name for their Fancy Metal Department.

From 1923, part-finished powder boxes were imported from the USA for assembly and decoration until the early 1930s when the company set up its own compact and lipstick case manufacturing plant. By 1939 Strattons were so successful that they were responsible for producing about 50% of these items made for the British cosmetic industry. The factory was destroyed in 1940 and production was not resumed until after the war, in new premises and with newly designed machinery.

Expansion in the 1950s saw the introduction of matching sets of ladies’ handbag accessories, including such items as compacts, lipstick holders, folding cased combs, pill boxes and cigarettes cases. Unfortunately there are few surviving records of the early 1950s; the first extant advertisement for a folding cased comb is dated 1955, which probably coincides with the introduction of their cased comb range. If you are reading this article you are probably interested on fashion, and looking for designer polarized sunglasses for women and well here’s the website for you.

The combs were injection moulded from either cellulose acetate or nylon and all products carried the familiar logo ‘Stratton Made in England’. The introduction of the ‘trigger’ comb around 1960 provided an easy mechanism by which the comb sprung from its case, not dissimilar from the ‘flick knife’ principle.

By the 1960s there were Stratton agents worldwide and new designs kept pace with changing fashions. However, comb production slowly declined and by the end of the 1980s cased combs no longer featured in the Stratton catalogues. Both compacts and folding combs were out of fashion. The last folding combs appeared in the US catalogues for 1987-88 and in the British catalogues for 1988-89. The company was finally sold in 1997.

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For more scholarly research, please examine our Resource Library and


The Comb: Its History and Development

Turtles, Mystery, and Love

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Turtles

A bomb fell on his house: the terror that annihilates all you love in an instant. Fight or flight? The surviving father grabbed his infant son and fled into the forest. No war. No bombs. Instead, the order of the wild. Perhaps there, his mind would regain order, too, and his son would be safe.

And so it happened that both of them stayed there for 40 years.

They built a house, wore loincloth, ate well, and made simple tools. With scavenged shrapnel from a bomb like the one that destroyed his house, the father made a comb. What is extraordinary about it, is with only the memory of society and a future of complete isolation, the right side was carved into the head of a turtle.

The turtle plays a part in many Vietnamese legends. In one of them, a Vietnamese king offered a sacred turtle to Emperor Yao of China (2356-2255 BC). On its shell was written the history of the Earth and Sky since they were born. Emperor Yao had it copied and called it the Turtle Calendar.

This father made a comb out of war.

Mystery

This unsigned cameo-glass French Art Nouveau hair comb is being auctioned on E-Bay.

I believe it is French, c. 1900, as the dealer says. English cameo glass is more well defined.

I like that the background was created to look like the brush strokes of an Impressionist painter. The painting behind the lady-slipper orchid depicts trees in a twilight sky, reflected in water. The “brush strokes” become larger when the artist “paints” the reflection.

But the orchid in the center is flat idea.

It doesn’t integrate with the background plot. Also it is a glass plaque simply hinged to a silver backing, nailed onto a horn comb. The hinges, or engineering, don’t play a part in the story. They are purely functional.

It’s not Lalique.

As you can see in his Raptor comb, the birds’ gold talons serve as hinges to the sapphires. Lalique combines engineering and Symbolism. (The comb sold for 92,000 euros on July 14, 2013, at the Brissonneau Auction House in Paris.)

Lalique’s famous Landscape Comb at the Gulbenkian was made of enameled glass encased in horn. The painting is the point of the comb, not the background.

Third, Lalique carved his orchids. I did not know where this comb resided, but the unmatchable Jen Cruse did. She commented, “Lalique’s orchid comb is in the Anderson collection at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich, England. I have seen it and its wonderful! It measures approx.19cm (7 1/2 inches) in height. The description reads: ‘Orchid haircomb of gold, glass, horn and enamel; c.1902. The erotic overtones of the orchid made it a favourite motif of the Art Nouveau artists. The petals are formed of yellow and brown enamels with the name ‘Lalique’ stamped on one of them. The centre of this exotic flower is formed in cut glass with a cut diamond of trapezium shape.’ From Lalique: Jewellery and Glassware by Tony L Mortimer. Octopus Books Ltd 1989. ISBN 1 871307 64 3”

Gallé and Daum made lamps, furniture, and vases out of cameo glass, not jewelry in 1900. (Please correct me if I am wrong.) Also, all three artists always signed their work. This comb is unsigned.

So I’m going to take a guess. This might be an “after hours” comb made by an artisan in the Daum or Gallé workshops, who took a piece of leftover glass, and created a comb for the woman he loved. It is very well worn, as there are many scratch marks on the back of the glass. She wore it. She loved him, and he made her beautiful.

Love

Alexander Calder made hair combs for his wife. She put them on the windowsill behind a houseplant. I can picture the room being a kitchen, where she could look at them and smile while making his favorite dish. Genius does not always have to be formally recognized. It can be personally recognized, loved intimately while looking at the hills outside your window.

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


Art of Vietnam (Temporis Collection)
Nature Transformed: French Art Nouveau Horn Jewelry
Calder Jewelry

Jen Cruse: The Butterfly Motif

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The butterfly, the short-lived ethereal beauty of gardens and countryside, has been a favourite motif adorning hair jewellery for at least the past 250 years and particularly popular through the 19th and early 20th centuries. Its delicate form is found on combs and hairpins from many countries around the world, and even featured on the celebrated comb attributed to one of the passengers on the fated Titanic before it sank in 1912. In Christian art, the butterfly symbolises the resurrected human soul. One Oriental source describes it as a sign of conjugal felicity – the Chinese Cupid – while another describes the butterfly, coupled with the chrysanthemum, as portraying beauty in old age. For the Maori peoples it represented the soul; for the Greeks, immortality; yet for the Japanese it indicated a vain woman or a fickle lover. Always popular in England, butterflies were a favourite in the 1870s during the vogue for insect motifs in jewellery and later favoured by the Art Nouveau and Art Deco artists and designers.

Here are a few examples:


Butterfly cased comb in celluloid. British or French, c. 1920s – 1930s.


Butterfly on translucent horn, China, mid-20th century.


Cut steel butterfly with horn tines. English, mid to late 19th Century.


Polished bone butterfly hairpin. Bali, 1950s to 1980s.


Celluloid butterfly comb and two hairpins. USA, c.1910-1920s.


Buffalo horn with inlaid mother-of-pearl butterfly. Indonesia, mid to late 20th Century.

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For more scholarly research, please examine our Resource Library and


The Comb: Its History and Development

Diamond Hair Combs at Sotheby’s

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It’s amazing what different artists can do with the same idea.

Boucheron made this curved diamond tiara c. 1910 in London. One could attach it to the blonde tortoiseshell comb fitting with a screwdriver. It sold for 15,600 GBP on December 15, 2005.

This diamond-and-pearl tiara hinged to a tortoiseshell comb is unsigned. In the center is large natural pearl, which can be taken out of the diamond openwork surrounding it. c. 1890. Sale price: 13,200 GBP on June 29, 2006.

Using diamonds to make this brooch look like lace, Cartier added comb and choker fittings together with a screwdriver. c. 1890. It sold for $181,000 on December 4, 2007.

Tiffany & Co. aced Art Deco design in this arrangement of diamonds, seed pearls, and platinum openwork, set on a tortoiseshell comb, c. 1910. It sold for $11,875 on December 9, 2008.

I’ll end with Art Nouveau master George Fouquet. He scrolled the top of this comb, making opal leaves, flowered with diamonds. A centerpiece of amethyst, diamonds, and gold completed his blonde tortoiseshell comb. c. 1900. Signed G.Fouquet, it sold for 7500 GBP on December 15, 2009.

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For more scholarly research, please examine


Boucheron: The Secret Archives
Cartier and America
Tiffany & Co.

Jen Cruse: The Spider Motif on Combs

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Spiders are not insects but belong to the class of arachnids, along with scorpions and mites. Numerous kinds of spiders exist all over the world and many weave webs from a natural secretion of silk thread exuding from glands in the underside of their abdomen, to attract insects for food. One of the most familiar types of webs is the large complex wheel-like web of the garden spider, the orb-web spider. Mythology broadly describes the web spider as the Mother of Destiny, the Great Weaver spinning the thread of life and weaving the web of time. To the American Indians an image of a spider on its web was a protective amulet against danger from wind, rain and all those natural weather phenomena which might threaten the spider’s own web.

Although the spider is not everyone’s best friend, throughout history spiders must have had a few admirers. Some sources say that, as a motif for jewellery, it originates from the beautiful and artistic hair ornaments worn by women of the Chinese ruling élite of the 17th century.

Illustrations
Celluloid web-and-spider comb is possibly of American origin, dating around 1920s.

Silver filigree spider in the centre of its web has a hinged 2-pronged pin attached to the reverse, making it a beguiling ornament for a dark coiffure under night lights or candles. Of indeterminable origin, it dates to the mid 20th century or earlier.

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For more scholarly research, please examine


The Comb: Its History and Development

Alexander Calder Silver Hair Comb

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At Sotheby’s, this Alexander Calder hair comb, c. 1940, sold for $35,000. First, a private collector in Wyoming acquired it directly from the artist. Then Sotheby’s sold it to a private collector in Connecticut, who had the auction house resell it on May 12, 2012. The comb is registered in the archives of the Calder Foundation.

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For more scholarly research, please examine


Calder Jewelry by Alexander S.C. Rower
(grandson of the artist) 		The Intimate World of Alexander Calder
by Daniel Marchesseau.
1989 Exhibition Catalog
with miniature works, including jewelry.