As the sun rose today, I got a Sun­day morn­ing urge to do some antiquing. With my hat, flip-flops and sun­block in place off I went in search of what­ever I would find. When I attend these shows, I almost never go with an agenda. There’s more fun to be had when hunt­ing and meet­ing up with the unex­pected. And in truth I’ve rarely, if ever, found exactly what I was look­ing for. The best part about shows, flea mar­kets and tag sales are the sur­prises, the peo­ple, and the lovely lit­tle tales to tell later on.

The deal­ers were in full force and ready for the crowds. Unfor­tu­nately for them and fab­u­lous for me, the lot wasn’t full of browsers at nine am. So I strolled up and down the aisles just to get a gen­eral sense of what the deal­ers brought. More than any­thing there was cos­tume jew­elry –and tons of huge brooches! Czech crys­tal pieces with large, lumi­nous stones were every­where as was Vic­to­ri­ana. Rolled gold bracelets, taille d’epergne (black line) enamel ear­rings, and Bohemian gar­net jew­elry all seemed to be among the bet­ter pieces I saw in the cases. Jew­elry from the last quar­ter of the nine­teenth cen­tury jew­elry appears to be the most plen­ti­ful among the antique gen­res. It has a cer­tain look that is clearly iden­ti­fi­able: a rosy hued metal usu­ally accom­pa­nied by a few intri­cate details and/or small col­or­ful gems. The smaller items, like pins or rings, when grouped together offer a whim­si­cal, eclec­tic look that works well with casual clothes like jeans or lit­tle sundresses.

At night, I’d wear an abun­dance of exam­ples with black because Vic­to­rian jew­elry is expres­sive and dis­sim­i­lar pieces, when blended together, cre­ate drama that is a tapes­try of tex­tures. Gold Vic­to­rian ear­rings are a sophis­ti­cated acces­sory for semi-formal lunches or meet­ing for work; they always stir up con­ver­sa­tion and add depth to your pro­fes­sional persona.

I stopped by one booth and saw this King­fisher feather brooch. I have to admit that it was love at first sight. The price was ok (a lit­tle more than $100) con­sid­er­ing its con­di­tion was only fair to good. How­ever, this type of jew­elry is rare to find here in the United States.

Although there was quite a bit of loss to the piece, its char­ac­ter was intact and the bal­ance of color between the metal and the irrides­cent blue of the feath­ers made it all the more attrac­tive to me. When the orna­ment was new, the entire sur­face of the dec­o­ra­tion would have been painstak­ingly cov­ered in feath­ers. King­fisher feath­ers are finer than hair and have to be applied with glue, by hand, to a sil­ver gilt or brass sur­face. Each lovely flo­ral urn is mounted on wire so that it moves, a tech­nique in jew­elry mak­ing termed, “en trem­blant” or trembling.

The sil­ver gilt in this par­tic­u­lar piece is in very good con­di­tion as was the metal work. As for age, it is a lit­tle dif­fi­cult to tell. King­fisher feather orna­ments are from China and in fact, the Chi­nese have been work­ing in this art form for more than 2,000 years. Col­lectible pieces are of a more recent vin­tage –say from the last one hun­dred or so years. Orna­ments made into hair­pins, combs, brooches, and ear­rings, are some­times accom­pa­nied by gems –the vibrant color com­bi­na­tion of coral and King­fisher blue is often seen in this jewelry.

King­fisher feath­ers were used in dec­o­ra­tive art work like screens and fans. The intri­cacy and work­man­ship of the com­po­si­tions I found online were stag­ger­ing. Tiaras were cre­ated for brides and the finest pieces were owned by roy­alty although even those whose means were less might own a small item. There is an excel­lent ref­er­ence book on the sub­ject by Bev­erly Jack­son enti­tled King­fisher Blue: Trea­sures of an Ancient Chi­nese Art. It should be noted that the King­fisher became nearly extinct due to the killing of these birds for their feath­ers. Pro­duc­tion of the art ended by 1940. Unfor­tu­nately there are fakes that are being made now with turkey feath­ers; copies gen­er­ally are less expen­sive and appear cheaply produced.

I also pur­chased a vin­tage Whit­ing and Davis hand­bag, circa 1970-ish. The gold frame has a Flo­ren­tine fin­ish and the mesh is enam­eled with a brown and black snakeskin-like print. I have a group of luncheon-and-lecture-appropriate white, taupe, brown, and black dresses to which the bag will lend a bit of the exotic. Its hand­stitched pale apri­cot satin lin­ing was in per­fect con­di­tion and I declared it a bar­gain at $35. So with sun on my shoul­ders and my wal­let much lighter than when I arrived, my field trip was done. As I headed back to my car, I hap­pily con­tem­plated all the ways I will be acces­soriz­ing this summer…