#Middlebury #Antiques
Birds’ feathers furnish the iridescent blue color on some antique Chinese jewelry. Gold-colored necklaces, earrings, pins and even hair ornaments were made in China with kingfisher feathers before the first century.
Few collectors know how difficult it is to make the delicate blue jewelry or how easily it is damaged. The metalsmith places thin strips of hot gilt copper on a flat outline of the finished piece. It is cooled, cleaned and polished, and glue is put into the empty spaces created by the strips. Then, using tweezers, small pieces of the fragile, shaped feathers are put on the glue. The feathers tend to rot over time, so few of the pre-1600 pieces remain.
Blue kingfisher feathers embellish these Chinese hair pins. They have phoenix birds with flame-shaped tails and irises as part of the design. The pair sold for $854.
Most similar 20th-century jewelry is made with blue enamel, not feathers, because of efforts to protect the kingfisher. A few pieces of antique kingfisher feather jewelry made from the 1600s to the 1900s were sold at a recent Neal auction for affordable prices. A pair of Chinese hairpins, each 5-1/4 inches long with gilt copper outlining blue birds and flowers, was estimated at $400 to $600 and sold for $854, including the premium.
Q: We inherited a table, and we are having trouble finding its value. It was bought in Granada, Spain, in the early 1970s and shipped to the U.S. with a duty value of $1,500. The table is wood with geometric inlay and panels that look like Arabic characters. It has two sets of legs, a shorter set for use as a coffee table and a taller set to be used for dining or games. The 37-1/2-inch-top is octagonal. Your help identifying the table and value would be appreciated.
A: Your table is decorated with marquetry. In Spanish it is called “taracea.” The Moors were the first in Spain to cover surfaces of furniture with geometric patterns made of wood, bone, metal and ivory. The Moors left a legacy of Hispano-Moorish art and design, and Granada still is a center of cabinet work. Multi-sided table tops with star patterns surrounded by floral designs and geometric borders were common. Your table was made by Laguna Taracea in Granada. The company was established by ancestors of today’s owner, Miguel Laguna, in 1877. The characters on your table are Arabic for “God is the greatest.” Tables similar to yours have sold for about $2,000.
Current Prices
Game, Scrabble, crossword, 100 wood letters, board and four wooden stands, 1950s, 14-1/4 x 7-1/2 inches, $20.
Thimble, c-scroll band, 18 karat gold, continental, 1-3/4 inches, $140.
Ship’s telescope, mahogany, brass mounts, three draws, lens cover and eyepiece slide dust cover, Troughton & Simms, c. 1890, 30 inches, $305.
Satsuma, jar, flowers, butterflies, cream ground, handles, Japan, 13 x 8 1/2 inches, $555.
TIP: If you buy an old iron pan that is very dirty, spray it with oven cleaner and put it in a sealed plastic bag for a few days. Then, clean it with a brass bristle brush. Rinse, then season the pan.
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(c) 2018 King Features Synd., Inc.
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