Little Keepsakes That Tell a Story

QUESTION: I live in Atlanta, Georgia, and attended some of the events at the Olympic Games held here in 1996. During the games, I acquired about 100 Olympic pins through purchase and trading. I’m particularly proud of the groups of pins I was able to collect, such as one in which all the pins are in the shapes of guitars. My favorite are the blimp pins commemorating the Good Year blimp that helped in media coverage of the games. Can you tell me how the tradition of collecting pins began and what the market is like for Olympic pins today?

ANSWER: You certainly seemed to have amassed quite a number of pins during the Atlanta Games. Today, pins come in all shapes, colors, and sizes and represent a myriad of people, activities, and events at the Games. With the start of the Summer Olympics in Rio this week, it seems appropriate to take a look back and see how pin collecting began.

Pin collecting has become a sport unto itself. But it wasn’t always like that. The Olympic pin tradition began with small cardboard badges worn by athletes and officials at the first modern Olympic Games held in Athens, Greece in 1896. Athletes from competing teams traded them as a gesture of goodwill. At the 1908 Games in Paris, designs of pins grew as specific groups like judges, coaches, and reporters got involved.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued the first pins to be sold to spectators at the 1912 Games in Stockholm, Sweden. Today, the pins created for the 1940 games,  cancelled because of World War II, are highly sought after by collectors.

In 1968, the Mexico City games featured the first butterfly-clutch pin fastener, which  became the standard for Olympic pins. But it wasn’t until the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, California, that trading pins became a tradition. Sponsoring companies, such as Coca-Cola, set up official trading stations to market their own pins. Because the pins were small and affordable, fans quickly seized the opportunity to bring home keepsakes for themselves. At the 1984 Los Angeles Games, some 17 million pins circulated among fans, participants, media representatives, and officials.

Pins began as a pre-social media form of communication that gave fans a reason to start a conversation with each other. The individual country Olympic committees, sponsors, bid cities, media outlets, and many others issue these colorful enameled pins today. Hundreds of thousands appear at each of the Games.

Pins are generally manufactured in limited numbered editions, and collectors seek out those produced in the smallest quantities or from the earliest Games. These also include pins issued by the various cities competing for a chance to host the Olympics.

Some of the most popular ones to collect are those from the smaller countries, such as Jamaica, the Seychelles, and Afghanistan. At the games, fans pin those they’ve collected onto a hat or the strap holding their Olympic credentials. As one fan walks by another, they look at each others’ pins and often one will ask where the other got a particular pin. From there, it’s onto trading and acquiring more pins. As the Games continue, fans try to either gather as many pins as possible or become selective as to the type of pins they want to collect.

The unwritten rule is to trade like pins for like pins. Of course, rules are meant to be broken and that’s the fun of it all. At the last Olympic Summer Games, fans were on the lookout for pins from Rio de Janeiro, the city to host the next Summer Games. At this Olympics, they’ll be on the lookout for pins from the next host city.

Somewhere in the host city, pin collectors representing pin collecting clubs from all over the world congregate to trade pins and stories. It won’t be any different in Rio. Also, hundreds of vendors set up tables to sell pins of every design and origin. Most of these cost about $5 each, so amassing a lot of them can cost a small fortune. The majority of people, however, acquire their pins by trading ones they have for ones they want.

Some collectors have over 30,000 pins in their collections. They’re always on the lookout for pins from the 1936 Berlin Games, a hot commodity in the pin collecting realm.

While it may seem that the only people trading pins are fans and athletes, everyone involved with the Olympics, from the members of the IOC to newspaper reporters, volunteers, judges, and coaches, all get involved.

It used to be that all you needed to do to begin collecting pins was to show up at the Olympics, find some pins and start trading. But today, beginning collectors can find thousands of pins online and while the fun of trading may not be there, the ability to collect just about any pin, even the important ones, is there—for a price.

Pin collecting is affordable and the little darlings don’t take up much room, so they’re ideal for anyone just starting out in collectibles. Searching the Internet for  “Olympic collectibles” will undoubtedly result in links for collecting pins.

An Israeli Olympic pin in the shape of a guitar from the Atlanta Games is today selling for $18 online. And while that same pin sells for a variety of prices, that’s not a bad return on investment. So let the pin games begin!

Wearable Beauty

QUESTION: My mother has a beautiful silver bracelet that my dad gave to her on their tenth wedding anniversary. The letters GJ are inscribed on the inside. I’ve always admired this bracelet and hope that one day it will be mine. Can you tell me who made this bracelet and perhaps something about it.

ANSWER: Your mother’s bracelet comes from Georg Jensen Studios in Copenhagen, Denmark, although I’m sure your dad purchased it at one of the company’s retail stores here in the U.S. Jensen is one of the premier jewelry companies in the world and continues to be known for its unique jewelry designs.

                           
Born in 1866, Jensen was the son of a knife grinder in the town of Raadvad north of Copenhagen. He started training to be a goldsmith when he was 14 as an apprentice with Guldsmed Andersen. But in 1884, he decided to study sculpture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Jensen had dreamed of being a sculptor ever since childhood. In 1887, a plaster bust of his father gained him admission into the Royal Danish Academy of Art. He exhibited his first sculpture at the 1891 Charlottenborg Spring Exhibit in Copenhagen and graduated the following year.

Although his clay sculpture was well received, making a living as a fine artist proved difficult, so he turned his hand to the applied arts. First as a modeler at the Bing & Grøndahl Porcelain Factory and, beginning in 1898, and then with a small pottery workshop he founded in partnership with Christian Petersen to make ornamental ceramics. Their ceramic jug, The Maid on the Jar, was selected for the arts and crafts exhibit in the Danish Pavilion at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris. The public and critics loved their work, but sales weren’t strong enough to support Jensen, who his point a widower, and his two small sons.

Through his ceramic work, Jensen received a travel grant award which allowed him to tour Europe at a time when the Art Nouveau movement was in full force. The work of these artists in beautiful, yet useful, objects inspired him. Upon is return Denmark, he became increasingly involved in designing and making jewelry. In 1901, he took a job as the foreman for goldsmith Mogens Bailin. Finally, in1904, he opened his own small shop in Copenhagen, employing an apprentice and a helper.

Jensen's early designs were primarily in the tradition of Arts & Crafts, with an emphasis on hand-beaten surfaces' and semi-precious stones. This was a time when the cost of materials was high, and wages for skilled labor was low. The stones Jensen selected---amber, moonstones, lapis lazuli, green agate, garnet, ebony, hematite and small bits of coral—were relatively inexpensive.

Georg Jensen never followed fashion, he created it. He opened his first retail store in Berlin in 1909. In 1912 he expanded his workshop and opened a large retail shop in Copenhagen. It's also important to note that from the beginning, he laid the groundwork for Georg Jensen as a brand, versus that of one artist, hiring talented artisans, craftsmen and designers. When other studios gave no credit to their designers, Jensen always did.

Jensen's training in metalsmithing along with his education in the fine arts allowed him to combine the two disciplines and revive the tradition of the artist craftsman. Soon, the beauty and quality of his Art Nouveau creations caught the eye of the public, assuring his success. Before the end of the 1920s, Jensen had opened retail outlets in New York, London, Paris, and Stockholm.

In 1905, he held his first exhibition outside Denmark at the Folkwang Museum in Hagen, Germany, and the museum purchased a number of his designs. In 1910, he received a gold medal at an exhibition in Brussels.

What really catapulted him to international fame, however, was his first U.S. exhibition at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco. In addition to being awarded more gold medals, an entire showcase of jewelry was purchased bythe newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.

At the time of his death in 1935, the New York Herald Tribune proclaimed him as "The greatest silversmith of the last 300 years.” His vision lived on through the employees he had trained and his small workshop developed into a worldwide company. Designers like Henning Koppel, Vivianna Torun Bulow-Hube, Manna Ditzel, and Arno Malinowski brought the company to the forefront of international design.

There has been no designer with the sustained appeal of Georg Jensen. His work continues to attract top collectors and museums throughout the world feature his pieces. For five generations his legacy has grown, unrivaled by any other 20th century creator. He is, quite simply, unique.