19th Century Jewellery: the Silver African

French Colonial Algeria (Third Republic)

a Handcrafted Hinge-and-Latch Silver Bracelet

circa 1892 (?)

     For those who keep out a sleeplessly strained and hungry eye for high-quality jewellery, this bracelet classifies itself as an authentic prize of pure hand workmanship, with more than one hundred years of age incised into its fluid skin. Compared with others of its kind, this piece likely originates from the hands of a French crafter situated in late nineteenth century Northern Africa rather than from one of the many jewellery-designing natives practising at the time. Not unlike Algerian tribal jewellery similarly hewn from silver, the bracelet’s particular style of repetitive ‘fish scale’ grooving and shallow inner notching nonetheless defines its maker’s inspiration as being indirectly reflective of local decorative tradition. Its figure is somewhat more shy and streamline in unity than its indigenous silver siblings (many of which boast of bold heavy clefts and glorious additional ornamentation in the forms of 'egg' bells and chains), hinting of a subtle influence stemming from Northern and Eastern territories. A collective joint of wide-spread turn-of-the-century tastes, this bracelet’s core stretches between Spanish, Algerian-Moroccan and even Indian aesthetics - with this being the reason for which I fashioned its new gold-and-silver latch [once missing] a singular clawed brass bell, a classic of India.

the Augarten Porcelain Manufactory: Döbrich

by (designer) Albin Döbrich; produced by A.P.M. (Vienna)

a Handpainted Porcelain Fennec Fox

circa 1911 (?)

     For a creature so small and sweetly meek, porcelain preserves perfectly the Fennec’s character. Unlike appearances, this species of fox can be surprisingly loud and boisterous when either excited or angry, usually piercing one’s eardrums with a high-pitched, drawn-out squeak that is more likely to come from a crabby, bad-tempered door mouse than from anything larger. The delicacy of milky white lining this Fennec’s coat emulates the natural sheen of its realistic counterpart, with the watery brown touches flecked along its muzzle, forehead, ears and back simulating, perhaps, its softest parts. Its fur is also enormously fluffy along its inner ears, acting as a kind of naturally-insulating muffler for the sensitivity of the fox’s extra-fine hearing abilities. To some, the Fennec may be too funny-looking and queer to be taken seriously as a true fox, but criticism and empty teasing matter little to its kind - the Fennec has ears for only bigger and better things.

James Mont

by designer James Mont

a Carved Oak and Bamboo End Cabinet

circa 1954

     With its strong segmented face, curved, linear and cycloptic, and with its gentle grey-blue, silver-browed and mottled skin, this one-of-a-pair work stands as monumental in stature as l’Arc de Triomphe itself, though in miniature. Recently swathed in renewed polish and re-touchings, the cabinet’s figure dominates the space with a steady, firm-footed confidence fit to elegantly wing (rather like a shoulder pad) the side of any equally charming bed, desk or canapé, independent of whether the styles of the furniture match or not. Designed to appear nearly solid, with its silhouette slim of any suggestion to its cavernous insides, this piece in fact houses an upper (frowning) drawer and a hinged, circular-handled doorway, each giving way to handsome and dark inner linings of bare oak. And additionally, with each cabinet’s brow leafed in an Edgar Brandt-esque net of framed woven silver, there results an undying shimmer inherent to the cabinet’s outlook - rather as how each dawn and sunset plays with the stone face of l’Arc de Triomphe.

20th Century Jewellery: the Ring

by (unknown) French (?) jeweller

a Black Opal and Diamond Cluster Ring

circa 1919 (?)

     Auctioned by Christie’s South Kensington in September of 2012, this jewel (both realistically and metaphorically speaking) reached the hammer price of nearly 3’000 British Pounds - only a few hundred shy of its initial estimate. What caught my eye at the time, while perusing the catalogue at hand, is the unusual and breathtaking natural swirling of the cabochon opal’s speckled face. My instant impression was that of the universe, wonderfully bottomless, ordered and dimension-less, being somehow cupped and stirred within the face of our moon, like a sweet and dark cup of tea handled and de-riddled by a mystic or Seer. Crowned with a complete mane of white diamonds, each like a ray of sun collected as a weightless dew drop, the opal face nestles comfortably inside a nearly-blinding scintillation of moist stars, drawing out further the stone’s splattered and stained skies belonging to the outer realms beyond Earth. And with an extra stretch of imagination, the ring’s face  evolves into a curious and wondrous chasm, or an open un-speaking mouth, equal to that of the Indian god Krishna when asked by his mother to prove his innocence against the unwise act of eating soil.