Vintage Thingies Thursday – vintage belt buckles…

Hi and welcome to another Vintage Thingies Thursday. This week I’m strutting some of my collection of vintage belt buckles. The first one is made of bakelite and has three coloured bakelite spheres, like traffic lights. The second is reverse-carved applejuice bakelite, with the carving highlighted in red paint.

A little number from the 1940s,  and an amazing celluloid buckle that has been cut and draped after the surface was painted bright pink!

A so-Deco celluloid buckle in shades of red/orange and a gorgeous red and cream buffed celluloid buckle.

More beautiful celluloids – the first is a marbled chequerboard design with lots of bright colours set against black. The second has been made to look like jade.

A beautiful ‘cupid’s bow’ bakelite buckle, and a Czech glass buckle with silver lustre.

I wonder what kind of dresses these adorned when they were first put to work. They’re certainly a lot more interesting than most of the buckles that are around today!

For more VTT fun, visit Coloradolady!

Vintage Thingies Thursday 6…..

This week I thought I’d blog about old bags – handbags that is. I love a really good vintage handbag, like the 1920’s kind or earlier. I also love kimono silk. So what better project than to match the two of them up? I bought some old celluloid purse frames, one even has its original celluloid link chain. My intention has been to fashion a bag out of the kimono silk, but as you can see I haven’t got very far…

 

  

This is a lovely cream ivoroid frame on vintage kimono silk in purple and buttercream – I love it!

The second frame is a deep amber colour.

 

 

This lovely marbled frame has a great swivel clip, and of course, the original chain.

 

 

This clever frame opens into a square, but locks in place with a swivel clip. This dusty purple silk is so beautiful.

I think the combination of celluloid with Japanese fabric works well together – very 1920’s!

Maybe one day I’ll get around to making my bags - I just need to be able to hack my way through to the sewing machine:

 Make your way over to  Confessions of an apron queen for more vintage thingies Thursday fun! 

Addendum: I just found out about Blogtoberfest (a blog a day for the whole of October) over at Big Cat’s Emporium, so I’ll make this my first Blogtoberfest post!

I’m going to blog about vintage buttons through the whole of October – a button a day (when I don’t have other blog commitments). Lots of button goodies – bakelite, celluloid, casein, needlelace, wood, mother-of-pearl, glass ……. so pop back from time to time and check out my button collection!

Button entropy

I decided to call the first post on my blog “Button Entropy”, partly because I am addicted to, obsessed with and inspired by buttons; partly because I am also a scientist and we’ve playing around with scientific words on a science-inspired art thread I belong to; and partly because entropy perfectly describes the way my house has become since I started collecting buttons.

Some web definitions of entropy:

“Quantitative measure of the disorder of a system. The greater the disorder, the higher the entropy.”

“Entropy is a measure of energy that is expended in a physical system but does no useful work, and tends to decrease the organizational order of the system.”

This is the high level of entropy in my house:

Dining room table

 

Spare??  room

 

 Another spare room!!

Enough said. Lets talk more about buttons. I adore vintage buttons. I love the workmanship and detail that went into creating them. I love that they weren’t spat out by the thousands in a production line. I love that you can pick up a beautiful old button and feel the history there, imagine the clothing it adorned and the person who wore it. And I love that you can still wear it today on a contemporary piece of clothing.

Over the past few years I have amassed literally thousands and thousands of vintage buttons, and every time I buy another lot, I can still find something I’ve never seen before. It’s like owning a miniature art collection. So it’s time time to share some of my treasures with like-minded enthusiasts. I’ll be posting images and related information on lots of different types of buttons over the coming months. So grab a cup of your favourite beverage, sit back and enjoy!

Well, a good place to start off would be to show you my favourite buttons. It’s a difficult job to single out a top favourite, but these wonderful black and cream 1920s buttons are up there with the best of them. They’re made of celluloid, and are so Deco!

         

So if you have some favourites to share, drop me a line!

And happy birthday to my mum – 84 candles today!

Until next time – cheers!