Antique and Vintage Charms.
Blame them like a lot of things on the Victorians! They invented them as they loved item with double meanings and symbols, like a swallow meaning I'll return , ivy meaning I'll cling to you for fidelity, snakes for fidelity and love, anchor for hope, suffragette colours for politics , I won't go on.So the Victorians loved double meanings as well as collecting things, so soon not only was hubby Gerald off hunting fossils and rocks, he was able to bring back a memento or indeed specimen of his collecting trip such as fossils. sharks tooth, lump of blue john, agate etc.
In the late 1890's charms were just starting to hit mass production with the start of hollow casting, to start off this was cast and welded in 2 halves later.
The charm collector was born , of course charms can and could be added easily often without aid of a jeweller to any bracelet, and again inexpensive but beautiful, a great combination. A lot of collectors, collect to a theme say love, animals , sailing etc. Best of all the identical charm say a rooster / cockerel will have many different meanings to all the collectors , latterly Pandora and Sabo even Cartier have caught on to this, we recently had some dodo designer ones from Italy in 9 and 18 ct gold both rose and yellow.
We don't stock many of the more modern ones as they feel faddy, not as good as the old ones, and too expensive not offering good value, a lot are 15 times the gold value. Of course some charms have almost no price as rare as rare, especially made by the originals like Chim ,Nuvo and Toby and not forgetting Thomas l. Mott , who made a fantastic series of flowers representing girls names and months of the years, truly beautiful and highly sought after.
Will blog more about charms another day
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