This tortoiseshell mantilla comb made by the Chinese for the Victorian market is huge and in only has one tiny stress mark. The name Spencer is featured in three places, and it dates from 1840. The decoration is a phoenix in a spray of flowers. It sold for $822 on March 19. You may refer to auction #280322136174.
Couldn’t resist. I had to sell a Dominick and Haff silver comb way back when, and I have always wanted another one. It has the marking D&H, I believe 61 is the model number, and then sterling. Condition: perfect. Price: $66.99! There is one selling on a retail site for $200. Yay. A bargain. :-)
In this set, there was also a knockout Edo comb, which went for only $55 because it was damaged. I wanted it, but I felt I had to be disciplined and only get things that were marked and in perfect condition because my funds are *cough* not endless. ;-) But this early 18th Century Japanese comb, with this level of art on it would have gone high. With the matching kogai stick, a signature, and everything in perfect condition, forget it.
This beautiful shell comb with two flowers was part of a set of two, which sold for $227.
French Empire diadem on the traditional brass comb. There are some teeth missing, but 3 galleries of cut brass decorations surrounding two rows of coral beads make this a magnificent piece. It sold for $529.50 on March 3. Myrnatoo bought it. It is attached to two sets of metal combs bent inwards, so it can be truly worn as a tiara. Gorgeous.
This Japanese early Meiji ivory set with gold makie birds flying in the trees has its matching kogai stick. It’s everything a collector wants: signed, perfect condition, rare material, exceptional artistry, age. The dealer wants $1600 for it. My offer of $1000 was turned down. It’s too expensive in my view, but this would be a first-class addition to any collection.
This beautiful Spanish mantilla-style comb is made of blonde tortoiseshell, and came from the Norma Hague collection. It sold for only $99. Great bargain! Beautiful, original decorative design.
And last is this c. 1910 art nouveau horn comb with two 14K gold birds meeting on top, for which the dealer wants $800, but has not accepted the one offer that was made.
I missed it. I was too busy trying to get the server up. Head bangs against wall. It sold on ebay for $586.11 on Feb 22. A masterpiece, a Maltese Falcon, a heartbreaker from French art deco designer Auguste Bonaz. Bonaz combs are made of celluloid. I would just like to say that Alexandre de Paris rare pieces, where Paris atteliers make 3 of them, follow the tradition of Bonaz.
Their faces look inside a perfect stillness.
It is the one who looks, who gives a doll their imagination.
Provenance gives them their history.
As I looked around the dining room,
Miniature clothes were embroidered in silver and gold.
Blue velvet dresses provided a backdrop for blonde curls.
A pink feathered hat adorned one, whose eyes were untouchable
A face that will never see horror,
A life that will never be defiled.
There is no memory inside a doll.
And so it was that surreality took me to a special house for a glatt-kosher dinner: the house of a doll collector.
She chose each one with meticulous care over 40 years, having owned an antiques shop and been a dressmaker. Her Galateas were placed elegantly on pedestals. They were either outside on display, or inside glass cabinets, grouped with the thought of how the viewer’s eye would move from unharmed face to perfect hand.
When I ate her food, an undiscovered identity emerged from a past life I never connected with before, in the shtetls of Russia, before my family escaped the Cossacks and came to America. This is what my ancestors must have eaten. This is who I must have been 120 years ago. America’s gift of individual freedom to pursue happiness was not known in that food. The American Dream is an identity revolution. It changes you. You become your own poem.
She showed me the pictures of her and her husband when they were young and just married, 58 years ago. How stunningly handsome they were.
The house shined with the perfection of their commitment to each other. A magnet that attached a piece of paper to the refrigerator said, “When we stand, we stand for Israel.” I immediately recognized this collection was a work of love over a lifetime and was given the honor to come back and take pictures.
Then I learned the secret: Her husband was a Holocaust survivor, who was suffering with Alzheimer’s disease. Before his memory went away too much, he wrote down his history of a life defiled, of unimaginable horror. Stunned, you read his child-like script.
When he arrived at Auschwitz, he was standing in a line of naked men, facing Mengele, who was gesturing people to the right (life) or to the left (death). Mengele directed him to go left, while his friend went to the right. So he spoke up. “I’m young and strong. I can work. I want to be with my friend.” So Mengele said, “OK, go to the right.”
She confronted her family and convinced them to take the last train out of Krakow. When he got out of the camps, he weighed 80 pounds. So when he married her, she…
cooked food like this…
for him…
for 58 years.
And when Alzheimer’s disease tells his lungs to forget how to breathe, he will not die alone — this proud Orthodox Jew 14 German death camps couldn’t kill. He will die with the dignity of a man having felt and eaten true love — in her arms, surrounded by the beauty of the world she made for him with her dolls — unharmed, as they look perfectly, eternally into the silence.
As some may know from looking at my profile in ebay’s My World, I’m on the community team of Moshi Monsters, a game that won 3rd place at the BAFTA Children’s Awards in London, recently. It’s an honor, of course, to be working on such a team with one of the best community managers in the world — which means the game is SAFE. But I digress. ;-)
In our members area, which I hope everyone will check out — it’s a port but much more is planned — there is a Babs’ Boutique. My nickname is Babs. The teens I’ve worked with for almost 5 years now gave it to me way back in the Paleolithic Age of TeenHood. :-) Anyway, the animators at Moshi drew Babs, and if this isn’t me, nothing is me. So I’m immortal now. LMAO. I think she wears her red hair exactly the same as I wear my hair! So here’s what I really look like. Now, I can really be taken seriously as a professional! LMAO. May I introduce my true self: Babs, in the Moshi Monsters virtual world for children. I hope everyone joins! You can buy virtual diamond and gold tiaras in the dress shops. :-)
There are a couple of things on ebay, which haven’t ended yet, so I can’t put them on, but I will soon. However, I searched around and found some nice things. Here is a nice collection of Victorian combs, which is being sold individually by Antiques and Common Treasures on Ruby Lane.
I like the three tortoiseshell hairpins.
This is a totally gorgeous French Empire seed-pearl diadem on tortoiseshell, which you will notice is a bit curved up, so you can wear it as a tiara in the front of a bun on top of your head. It is in perfect condition, and selling for $695.
Something else I loved was a diadem comb top also from the French Empire period, which sold on ebay for $1027.50 on Dec. 29, 2008.
This Chinese-made ivory comb for the Victorian market is only selling for $145 on Ruby Lane. The decoration is three birds perched on a flower, and it’s 6 1/2″ high and 3 1/4″ wide. I’d say this is a good buy.
Finally, Christies is selling a set of two beautiful Belle Epoque shell hair pins with 212 diamonds between them, on platinum, c 1900. They will be sold on Feb. 9, est: $5,000 – $7,000.
This Greek Ivory comb, c. 350 B.C., with a letter of authenticity, and a fabulously carved woman’s face sold for $813 on Jan 20, 2009.
First, I’d like to thank the ebay community, especially 0o–seamstress–o0, qmbridges, bengaltiger55, igmato, kynana33, mypinkmimosa, dorothy4284, and pelliott4dz0 for their prayers and comments. They touched my heart and were most appreciated.
Today, I’d like to go back to a subject I talked about earlier in the blog, 15th-century French ivory- and boxwood-carved H combs. First used as religious objects, their designs went secular just about the time madrigals left the church and started being about love.
This comb, being sold at Sothebys, est. $12,000, has multiple panels, and a pierced heart on one side, a Romanesque motif on the other. It might be part of that tradition of ideas, but it is in perfect condition, and I think magnificent. To think that the French made H combs at all, given what they did to comb making 400 years later is amazing to me.
Made with .925-silver, agate, jade, and moonstone, this barrette is German, c. 1930. What makes it special is that in the literature highlights of the Schmuckmuseum, Pforzheim, Fritz Falk, 2004, page 76, there is an illustration ofa Rene Lalique brooch that looks just like it, called Willow Wands. It is on sale at the Tadema Gallery in the $2500 – $5000 range.
In addition, at Christies, a suite of early 19th Century gold and turquoise English jewelry is being sold, bearing an estimate of 5000 UKP. The suite includes a necklace, earrings, a bracelet, brooch, and this gorgeous tiara.
Yes,every day my hairdresser comes to outfit me in the tiaras and dresses and hairstyles that go with them *cough*, but this painting by Louis-Marie Autissier (1772-1830) shows a lady in a blue satin dress with a Renaissance collar and a pearl-set gold tiara in her perfectly curled brown hair.
Here are two beautiful, signed Tiffany & Co. combs in diamonds and tortoiseshell. The first one is a platinum, seed pearl, and European-cut diamond hair comb c. 1910, sold for $11,875 on Dec 9.
The second is a set of two-pronged shell and diamond combs, set in platinum. c. 1910, sold for $25,000.
However, in every magnificent jewel auction, there is one breathtaking product of nature created before the beginning of time. Here, it is a rare, fancy, deep blue 10.48-carat diamond — flawless. There are no secondary colors. When a diamond is blue, carbon atoms have been replaced by boron, which is how the diamond absorbs its color. How you can put a price on such an object is beyond me, but it is estimated at $5 million. This is the drug, the dream, the Maltese Falcon. Who knows what the addicts who can buy this sort of thing will give up for it.
