QUESTION: I love to go to flea markets and root around in the cases of small items that some dealers have on their tables. I never know what I’m going to find. A few months ago, I stumbled upon a bizarre brass pin in the shape of a gas mask with the inscription “Britain Can Take It” cast into it below the mask. Naturally, I had to have it but can’t find anything on it. Do you have any idea what this pin could have been used for and perhaps how old it is? Because of the gas mask design, I’m thinking it’s probably from around World War I.ANSWER: You happened on a very unique collectible from World War II—a piece of war relief jewelry. Most people have never heard of it, let alone seen one. This particular pin was a fur/dress clip produced around 1940 by Silson for Bundles for Britain.
Jewelry, started in 1937 by Victor and Jack Silberfeld, both Britains, who later changed their last name to Silson and their company name to Silson Inc. of New York, produced two of the most emotionally charged war relief pins---the "Britain Can Take It" gas mask brooch or dress clip and the 'Battle of Britain" bomb fragment pin. Both pins seemed calculated to bring the reality of "the European war" home to the American public. They mainly produced costume jewelry for the American market. Victor was the main designer, but George Stangl and Samuel Rubin also designed pieces for Silson.Silson manufactured the first pin, shaped like a British gas mask, in both sterling silver and copper-painted pot metal versions. The company made the second pin, sold an behalf of BAAC, of an actual bomb fragment, gilded or painted black, with "Battle of Britain" engraved across the front. Both of these brooches are rare and highly valued by RAF and British home front collectors. Silson made costume jewelry for a little over 10 years.
Jewelry makers like Cartier, Coro, and Accessocraft produced World War II war relief brooches to fill both political and humanitarian needs. Politically, buying and wearing a war relief item showed support for the Roosevelt Administration's anti-isolationist stance. As Hitler's Blitzkreig continued to devastate one European country after another, humanitarian agencies began popping up in the U.S. to help the victims of Nazi aggression. They began by sending money and food through the Red Cross. Soon, refugee children and women’s knitting groups began producing first sea boot liners for British sailors, then sweaters for civilian bombing victims.Various means, from penny-a-punt contract bridge parties to glittering benefit halls, funded these relief efforts. Many organizations produced "emblems,” made into brooches or attached to compacts, which local chapters and better department stores sold to the public. Depending on the item and the organization, 10 to 90 percent of the purchase price went directly to relief work.
Dealers and collectors often mistake these emblems for European pins, as they incorporate patriotic images from the country they support. The pins can he found in rhinestones and vermeil—gold plate over sterling—as well as brass and enamel. The brooches produced toward the end of the war used cheaper materials and construction methods because brass, silver and gold were necessary for the war effort.In early 1940, the Allied Relief Fund asked Cartier to design an emblem for them. The company responded with a gold-plated brooch featuring the ram-pant lion of England against an elaborately enameled Union Jack shield, bearing a banner showing the organization's name. When the ARF joined the British War Relief Society in December 1940, Cartier changed the banner on the brooch to reflect this. The Allied Relief Fund version is rare, since they were manufactured for less than a year.
The British War Relief Society and Bundles for Britain were the most successful sellers of war relief jewelry. The British war relief emblem, based loosely on the coat of arms of the British royal family, depicting a rampant lion surrounded by the phrase Dieu et moo Droit (God and My Right) and hacked by bunting. An early use of the "branding" concept so popular in marketing today, it was reproduced on everything from press releases to playing cards.Accessocraft made the jewelry, which was sold at benefits, local branch workrooms and Bergdorf Goodman in New York City. The brooches are commonly marked "Official BWRS and BB by Aeeessncraft," BWRS and BB indicating British War Relief Society and Bundles for Britain, respectively. They sold for $l for the small one and $2.75 for the large. Accessocraft also manufactured pins in a number of other designs for these organizations.
War relief pins with the initials of the Royal Air Force were particularly popular with the public and are among the items dealers, and even World War II jewelry experts, most often misidentify. The RAF section of Bundles for Britain commissioned a wing pin from Monet. It is 24k gold-plated and was produced in three varieties. The BWRS had a gold-plated RAF wing pin created by Accessocraft in two sizes. The brooch sometimes he found with a chain to connect it to another pin, a popular design in the 1940s. The
British American Ambulance Corps was perhaps the most prolific of the RAP pin sellers. Coro produced wings for them in two versions—the larger of brass, the smaller of sterling silver—and various color combinations.
One of the BAAC's RAF pins is an enameled roundel pin produced in conjunction with their "Thumbs Up Cavalcade" fund-raising campaign. The roundel is the bull's-eye mark that identifies the nationality of a plane. Neither is marked British American Ambulance and so are commonly misidentified as RAF uniform or sweetheart pins.
Also on behalf of the BAAC, Bloomingdale's sold a set of sterling silver pins shaped like garden tools with the theme "Gather the Tools of Victory." The set cost $1.50, with 10 percent going toward relief work. Today, these tool pins are rarely found as a set and, as was common with many of the war relief items, their identification as such was only indicated on the backing card.
To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site. And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about the Industrial Age n the 2020 Winter Edition, "The Wonders of the Industrial Age," online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.
