Jewelry as Wearable Art

 

QUESTION: My mother loved costume jewelry and had many, many pieces. But, years ago, when she asked if I wanted her necklaces, pins and earrings, I responded, "That junk!" Recently, I was going through some of her things and found a jewelry box full of the stuff. Is it worth anything? If not, I’m going to give it to Goodwill.

ANSWER: Believe it or not, your mother’s costume jewelry may be worth more than you ever imagined, depending on its condition and who made it. Many collectors consider it a form of wearable art and a reflection of the wearer’s personality.

Essentially, costume jewelry has been around for a long time. Artificial jewels and adornments have been worn for thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians wore bib necklaces and chokers. The ancient Greeks wore hoop earrings as well as studs and pendants. The Romans wore glass and gold bracelets. 

During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, women wore brooches, necklaces and hairpieces of real and imitation materials. Men wore earrings and paste buckles an their shoes. By this time, jewelry represented social status and wealth as well as political and religious importance. Queen Elizabeth I wore gowns encrusted with sewed on paste (rhinestones), glass, and pearls in the 16th century. 

And during the Victorian Era, women desired small, tasteful, gold, pearl and diamond jewelry. Along with rigid mores and controlled expression went the "repressed" designs of that era drab, dark and understated.

Not everyone could afford the real thing though, so middle and working-class women wore "imitation" paste jewelry, or items made out of less inexpensive materials such as   coral and jet. Yet, it took the same amount of labor to create these "false" gems as it did to produce the real. Victorian jewelry makers hard set glass in claws rather than glued in hand painted brooches. As labor was cheap, women of leaser means could afford something beautiful. And jewelry makers attempted to make imitation jewelry as close to the real thing as possible so no one could tell the difference.

Through the Edwardian Era, most jewelry was understated and dainty, although some    Edwardian clothing was heavy with beadwork to display a woman's wealth and status. Edwardian women loved costume jewelry as well—glass imitating emeralds, rubber appearing as jet, and marcasites posing as diamonds.

But then came the Jazz Age in the 1920s. . Women stepped out of their corsets and into the automobile. Strict Victorian codes of behavior fell by the wayside. Further, the austerities demanded by World War I caused the interest in precious jewelry to fade. Finally, costume jewelry began to come into its own.

Some say it was Coco Chanel who ordered specific jewelry to go with her latest "costume."  Designers created so-called "fashion jewelry and sold it at jewelry counters in department stores. Costume jewelry, considered low-line, was sold in the notions departments.

It was designer Coco Chanel who, first mixed faux jewelry with real, urging women to layer of bracelets and use other pieces with her   clothing collections. By the end of the 1920s, most couture houses such as Lanvin and Schiaparelli, had teamed up with jewelers who created faux lines to accompany their collections. 

The discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922 spurred the popularity of Egyptian-style jewelry that endured to the end of the 1930s. Women preferred black and white, so jewelry designers began using combinations of crystal and onyx, and ivory, marcasite and ebony. The cultured pearl first appeared in the 1920s and Bakelite, celluloid and other synthetic plastics had already been invented. Women wore jewelry in numerous colors of plain, multicolored and carved plastics, some accented with rhinestones and pearls. 

American women welcomed the new costume jewelry craze, and during the 1920s and 1930s, such designers as Hattie Carnegie and Miriam Haskell, who created high-end, beautifully made costume jewelry sold in such retail outlets as Saks Fifth Avenue. The working girl wasn’t forgotten, however, and in spite of, or maybe because of, the Great Depression, she wanted to put some glamor in her life, too. Maybe she couldn't afford to buy a new outfit, but she could save her money and purchase a paste or marcasite pin for 19 cents to liven up an old dress. 

Eisenberg originally made rhinestone dress clips and pins to enhance his line of Eisenberg Original clothing. But as pins continued to be stolen off his dresses, it was suggested that he maintain a store to satisfy demand for the pins. That was the beginning of the Eisenberg rhinestone jewelry business. Eisenberg always used the finest, most flawless Austrian stones from Swarovski. There are few stones of this quality anywhere, at any price today. During the 1970s, an Eisenberg necklace sold for $50. Today, that same necklace can go for as high as $1,000.

With the advent of World War II, costume jewelry factories were converted into producing supplies suppliers for the military. Many materials used in the production of costume jewelry became unavailable. Jewelry makers were forced to use sterling silver as white metal was being used in the war effort. Some designers used wood or leather as alternatives and vermeil (gold wash over sterling) was also popular. But sterling silver wasn’t only expensive but it tarnished. So after the War, most costume jewelry producers dropped its use and returned to using metals such as rhodium which is extremely durable and keeps its original shine. That’s why jewelry made with rhodium 45 years ago still has the brilliance it had the day it was made. White and gold-colored metals have remained in use for costume jewelry up to the present.

After the war, women wanted to glitter up. The biggest change came during the 1950s and 1960s, when women broke with tradition and began to wear sparkling jewelry during the day as well as in the evening. Femininity and the look of luxury were in. Politics aside, this revisionist time produced some of the most beautiful costume jewelry ever. Huge pins, large rings and bracelets, dangling earrings were de rigeur at any time of day or night. The big pin explosion large, gem-encrusted spirals, comets and stars-brightened the simple, tailored day clothes of the early I960s.

Designers to look for include Castlecliff, Lisner, Mazer, Emmons (forerunner of Sarah    Coventry), Ciner, Jomaz, Weiss, Richter and Schreiner, to name but a few.

Techniques for making fine costume jewelry remain time-consuming even today. Casting, molding, and stone settings are still done by hand for the best pieces, and they become collectible and increase value almost as seen as they disappear from the marketplace. While machines made lesser lines which can be found by the hundreds in department and variety stores. The jewelry treasured today, such as early marcasite and plastic jewelry, were also made by machines With the imprimatur of age, nobody  calls costume jewelry junk anymore.

It used to be that costume jewelry could be found at garage and yard sales in bags marked “Junk Jewelry—$5 takes it all.” Today, that’s most unlikely, especially in the suburbs around big cities. The early 1990s saw a rapid escalation in prices as marked costume jewelry became a "hot" collectible especially high-end big city shopping areas and popular tourist destinations. Prices escalated into the stratosphere as collectors searched for less common examples. This was the result of European buyers paying huge sums to dealers for American-made costume jewelry, then selling it for even higher prices overseas. But over time, prices began to settle. And while those for the best pieces stayed high, the prices for mid to lower-range pieces dropped.

As with many vintage collectibles, reproductions by some former jewelry makers, such costume jewelry makers, such as Eiisenberg, affected the costume jewelry market by the end of the 20th century. These piece, using leftover materials from former production lines,  are often sold a special limited editions and come with a certificate of authenticity. As with other limited edition collectibles, these pieces usually sell to novice collectors and rarely appreciate in value. 

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 Sporting Life" in the 2025 Summer Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Flashing the Way to Popularity

 

QUESTION: I recently purchased a mug that seems to be made of cut glass with red band and gold decoration at a local antique coop. Is this ruby glass? 

ANSWER: What you have is a mug of ruby stained glass, in which artisans painted a piece of pressed glass with a solution that turned red after firing a second time. True ruby glass is red all the way through. Glass makers originally created the deep ruby red color by adding gold, but that was rather expensive, making this type of glass costly. 

Bohemian glass makers discovered ruby glass in the second half of the 17th century when Bohemian glass makers, in their effort to imitate Venetian glass, had only a colorless potash-lime glass with which to work. And although it could be decorated, colored glass wasn’t possible.

Then someone discovered that glass could be colored red by adding an oxide of gold to the formula. As it came out of the pot it was amber, but when articles made in it were reheated they became a clear and true red.

For a time this art seemed to have been lost, but Bohemian glass makers began making ruby glass again at the beginning of the 19th Century, but instead of being solid colored, they made pieces of colorless glass, then encased them with a thin layer of red.

Ruby flash was a less expensive way to produce the glass within the blowing process. Glassblowers would blow glass a bit, then cool it, after which they dipped it into molten red glass, producing a layer of red over the clear glass. The coating on the clear glass consisted of a chemical solution containing copper sulfide that glass makers baked in a kiln, turning the coating bright red. With ruby flash glass, the entire piece of clear class became covered in red glass. 

This allowed a glass company to make pressed glass “blanks” and sell them to finishing companies, whose artisans would engrave patterns in the red coating, revealing the clear glass underneath. It’s this flashed glass, made around 1850, that’s commonly known today. Because of its two layers of glass, as it were, ruby flash glass offered an opportunity for dramatic cutting and engraving, the pattern showing up in the clear glass against the ruby ground. American glass makers went to work to imitate it and called it “Bohemian.”

Sometimes, glass companies “flashed” entire sets of dinnerware, occasionally adding  touches of gold. Ruby flash’s popularity began to decline around 1929, probably due to the onset of the Great Depression.  

Of the various patterns of ruby flash glass, "King's Crown" was the most common.  Several different glass companies made a variation of King's Crown.  The name comes from the zig-zag design, like the top of a crown. Other popular patterns included  “Ruby Thumbprint,” “Prize,” “Crystal Wedding” “Heart Band.” 

While glass makers used ruby glass for decorative wares—vases, urns, bottles, bowls, candy dishes, etc. It was also used for tableware such as goblets, wines, carafes, cordial sets, finger-bowls, fruit bowls, compotes and the like. Glass makers also produced dresser pieces, such as perfume bottles and pomade jars, as well as lamps and candlesticks in the rich red glass.

Smaller items, sold as souvenirs, such as toothpick holders, tumblers, goblets, creamers and pitchers, were made in ruby-stained glass. Staining a piece of glass involved painting an already-pressed piece of clear pattern glass with a ruby-colored stain and reheating it to 1,000 degrees in a kiln which turned the coating bright red.

This enabled sellers to engrave a piece through its thin red coating with the name of a destination and the date, thus making the clear glass shine through. Glass makers created thousands of these small articles for the large expositions, such as the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, as well as popular county fairs.

One of the more popular ruby stained patterns, Button Arches, introduced originally around 1898, continued in production until the 1960s and 1970s. The design consisted of slightly overlapping pointed arches around the bottom edges and covers of pieces, each arch containing tightly packed "buttons." 

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A Silver Alternative

 

QUESTION: As I was browsing a weekly flea market, I came upon a curious silver vase—at least I thought it was silver. But when I picked it up, it felt like glass and was much lighter than silver. The dealer said it was Mercury glass. I never heard of such a thing. Can you tell me more about it?

ANSWER: As the Industrial Revolution gained momentum, the growing middle class wanted inexpensive alternatives to the silver objects owned by the wealthy. One of those alternatives was Mercury glass, first made as an inexpensive silver substitute. Soon it evolved into an art form of its own.

First produced in the late 18th century, Mercury glass was a handblown, double-walled glass with an interior coating of silver-colored metal compounds. It took many forms, including candlesticks, compotes, candy dishes, plates, goblets, wig stands, curtain tiebacks, and doorknobs. Some critics condemned it for looking too much like mirrored glass and too little like silver, which was what people liked about it.

Produced originally from around 1840 until around 1930 in Bohemia, now the Czech Republic, and Germany, it spread to England in 1849 when Edward Varnish and Frederick Hale Thomson patented the technique for silvering glass vessels, and continued to be made there until 1855.

Mercury glass, also known as silvered glass, contains neither mercury nor silver. It's actually clear glass, mold-blown into double-walled shapes and coated on the inside with a silvering solution containing silver nitrate and grape sugar, heated, then closed. Sealing methods included metal discs covered with a glass round in England, or a cork inserted into the unpolished pontil scar on the bottom in America. In the beginning a few Bohemian makers tried to line their pieces with a mercury solution, but they stopped using it due to expense and toxicity. However, this is where the name originated.

Companies in the United States, including the Boston and Sandwich Glass Company, New England Glass Company Union Glass Company, and the Boston Silver Glass Company, made silvered glass from about 1852 to 1880. The New England Glass Company displayed a variety of silvered glass articles, including copper wheel engraved goblets, vases and other tableware at the 1853 New Crystal Palace Exhibition.

Bohemian Mercury glassmakers decorated their pieces with a variety of techniques including painting, enameling, etching, and surface engraving. Antique historians believe it to be the first true "art glass"---glass made for display and for its artistic value rather than for everyday use.

The peak of Mercury glass’ popularity came in the mid-19th century. Back then, high-quality European and American-made pieces were lightweight, had graceful forms, and came decorated with acid-etched fruit or floral motifs, cut glass designs, and sometimes paint. Young girls, working on assembly lines, painted vases in particular with their own designs of swans, daisies, or leaves. Makers intended the details on their pieces to be equal to the finest decoration on other forms of glass and china.

After briefly falling out of favor, Mercury glass reappeared around 1900 in the form of Christmas ornaments and gazing balls, as well as blown fruits and flowers. Today, most serious collectors concentrate on antique forms, like curtain pins, salt cellars, or pedestal-footed silvered vases.

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 Art Deco World" in the 2024 Spring Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Dreaming of a Brite Christmas

 

QUESTION: For several years I’ve been searching for older ornaments for my Christmas tree. I’ve seen a good number at flea markets and antique cooperatives. Many of these are still in their original boxes marked “Shiny Brite.” I’d like to know more about this company. When did they produce ornaments and what kind did they produce?

ANSWER: Today, the trend is to decorate Christmas trees with handcrafted ornaments, from simpler ones sold at church bazar to finely crafted ones of wood, silver, and gold sold at Christmas markets throughout the world. But some people prefer to decorate their trees with nostalgic glass ornaments from their childhood.

Ornaments that decorated yesterday’s trees continue to create holiday traditions. Shiny glass orbs hang from branches in bright, shiny colors, and sparkly patterns. Shiny Brite was a mid-20th-century brand created by German-American immigrant Max Eckardt.

Blown-glass Christmas ornaments with hand-painted accents got their start in the German village of Lauscha in the 1840s. Glassmakers blew molten glass into molds shaped like fruit and nuts, then silvered the inside with a special compound of silver nitrate and sugar water. 

As a native of a small village near Lauscha, Eckhardt knew the appeal of glass ornaments and also saw their potential in the American market. He had been importing hand-blown glass balls from his homeland since the early 20th century. He had the foresight to anticipate a disruption in his supply of glass from Germany from the upcoming World War II and in 1937, he established the Shiny Brite Company in New York.  The silver nitrate coating on the insides of his ornaments inspired him to name his company Shiny Brite.

To keep his company afloat, Eckhardt sought the help of New York’s Corning Glass Company, with the promise that F.W. Woolworth would place a large order if Corning could modify its glass ribbon machine, which made light bulbs, to produce ornaments. This machine, built in 1926, produced 2,000 light bulbs per minute. The transition was a success, and Woolworth’s ordered more than 235,000 ornaments. In December 1939,Eckhardt shipped the first machine-made batch to its 5-and-10-Cent Stores, where they sold for 2 to 10 cents each.

By 1940, Corning was producing 300,000 unadorned ornaments per day, sending the clear glass balls to outside artists, including those at Eckardt’s factories, to be hand decorated. After being lined with silver nitrate, the ornaments ran through a lacquer bath, received decoration from Eckardt’s employees and packaging in brown cardboard boxes. According to a LIFE magazine article from December 1940, Corning Glass Works expected to produce 40 million ornaments by the end of that year, supplying 100 percent of the domestic ornament market.

Originally, the ornaments were plain silver, but eventually Eckardt produced them in a large variety of colors: with classic red the most popular color in the 1940s, followed by green, gold, pink and blue, both in solids and stripes. The company also offered Shiny Brite ornaments in a variety of shapes besides balls, including tops, bells, icicles, teardrops, trees, finials, pine cones, and Japanese lanterns, and reflectors. Workers decorated some with mica “snow.”

Through the 1940s and 1950s, Shiny Brite ornaments became the most popular tree ornaments in the U.S. Eckhardt stressed that they were American-made as a selling point during World War II by featuring Uncle Sam shaking hands with Santa on the front of the original 1940's boxes.

Corning continued to crank out Shiny Brite ornaments, and by the 1950s, production reached a rate of 1,000 per minute; with machines also painting them at that time. The 1950s was the peak of Shiny Brite production and popularity, with Eckardt operating four New Jersey factories to keep pace with the demand.

Shiny Brite ornaments dangled from trees through the early 1960s, until plastic ornaments became more popular. But over the years, vintage Shiny Brites have remained popular with collectors for their beauty and nostalgia, and acting as a sort of time capsule of American holiday history. They are some of the most sought after vintage ornaments from the mid 20th century and are the perfect decoration for those Space-Age aluminum trees.

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 Age of Photography" in the 2023 Holiday Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Brightening the World with Loetz Glass

 

QUESTION: I like to collect art glass. Over the years, I added many pieces to my collection. Recently, I discovered a beautiful vase at an antique show. The dealer said it was made by Loetz of Czechoslovakia. From its design and form—it’s a classic green vase with large orange dots—it looks to be Art Nouveau, but I’m really not sure when the company produced it. What can you tell me about Loetz Glass? I’d like to add more pieces to my collection. Did they only make one type of art glass or did they diversify?

ANSWER: Loetz produced your vase around 1911, so it definitely falls within the time of Art Nouveau. Loetz was the premier Bohemian art glass manufacturer during the Art Nouveau period from about 1890 to 1920. 

It’s commonly believed that Johann Loetz founded his glassworks in 1840. In fact, Johann Eisner, another glassmaker, opened a glassworks four years earlier in Klostermühle, a town in southern Bohemia, in what’s now the Czech Republic. His heirs sold the glassworks to Martin Schmid in 1849, and two years later Schmid sold it to Frank Gerstner, attorney-at-law, and his wife Susanne, who was the widow (Witwe in German) of glassmaker Johann Loetz. 

Gerstner transferred sole ownership to his wife shortly before his death in 1855, after which she successfully expanded the company for 20 years, manufacturing mainly crystal, overlay and painted glass.

In 1879, Susanne transferred the company, now called Johann Loetz Witwe, to Maximilian von Spaun, the son of her daughter Karoline. One year later, von Spaun hired Eduard Prochaska and the two of them modernized the factory and introduced new, patented techniques and processes.

Before Loetz became known for its Phänomen and "oil spot" pieces, it had pioneered a surface technique called Marmoriertes, which produced a marbled red, pink, or green surface on objects such as vases and bowls which imitated semi-precious stones, such as malachite, onyx, and red chalcedony. 

Phänomen featured rippled or featherlike designs on the object’s surface. Loetz artisans achieved this unique effect by wrapping hot glass threads around an equally hot molten base. They then pulled threads on the piece’s surface to make waves and other designs while the materials were still malleable. They combined this with techniques pioneered by Louis Comfort Tiffany in the United States.

Another late-1880s forerunner of its most prized pieces was its Octopus line, whose white curlicue lines on a darker, mottled surface resembled the tentacles of octopi.

In 1889, the company took first prize at the Paris Exhibition for its classic vase forms, some of which were hand-worked and deformed into swirling, organic-looking shapes like seashells, flowers, and tree trunks. Decorative vases, cups, and pitchers were other popular forms in the Loetz lineup, and many of the pieces glowed thanks to their iridescent sheen from the firing and reduction techniques.

By 1904 sales began to fall off as the interest in Phänomen glass had begun to decline. So the company intensified its collaboration with Viennese designers to compensate for a lack of its own innovation. In 1909, Loetz appointed Adolf Beckert, a specialist in etched decoration, as its new artistic director. In the same year, von Spaun transferred management of the glassworks to his son, Maximilian Robert. But financial problems forced the company into bankruptcy in 1911.

Another series from the turn-of-the-century was known as Streifen und Flecken, or stripes and spots, whose cheerful shapes and colors were as friendly as a polka-dot skirt from the 1950s. Asträa pieces also had oil spots, although the base color tended toward the metallic. Works in the Diaspora series were almost all dots, whether it was a simple vase or a one shaped like a chambered nautilus.

The use of patterns was also a hallmark of Loetz art glass. The Spiraloptisch were a blizzard of spirals, while the more formal looking pieces in the Décor series were painted and etched with leaf and flower shapes to create works with an almost Asian sensibility.

After 1905, when interest in the florals waned, Loetz artisans pushed their glass surface treatments further than ever while relying on shapes that the company had used for decades. For example, the roiling surfaces of the Titania pieces pre-date Abstract Expressionism by 30 years. Loetz’s Perlglas pieces were translucent, giving more weight to the forms as sculpture rather than distracting the viewer with dazzling surfaces.

But without a doubt, the most memorable Loetz art glass from the end of the Art Nouveau era was its Tango line. Unlike the work that had preceded it, which was all about dense color combinations and tricky surface treatments, these two-toned pieces typically featured single colors on mostly unadorned surfaces, with contrasting lip wraps or handles.

The last significant period for Loetz occurred between the wars. In the beginning of the 1920s, Loetz revived late 19th-century cameo glass, which had been pioneered by Émile Gallé and others. Compared to the work that had come before it, these Loetz vases, bowls and jugs, with their etched, almost sentimental depictions of flowers and scenics, were traditional and safe.

But by 1939, the company had begun to run out of money, and in 1940 a disastrous fire destroyed the factory. After the war, the East German Government nationalized Loetz Witwe, but in 1947 the lights went out for good.

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 Age of Photography" in the 2023 Fall Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Those Happy Days

 

QUESTION: After the death of my mother, I’ve started to clear out my parent’s house to get it ready for sale. Among the items I’ve been sorting through were a good number of what I believe were things from the 1950s. Since I was only a small child during that time, I’m really not exactly sure what is from back then. Can you give me an idea of the type of things that might have some resale value and where I might sell them?

ANSWER: The 1950s were a time of relative prosperity after the end of World War II. However, items from back then fall into two categories—higher end pieces like futuristically designed furniture and accessories and everyday items like kitchen and household wares. And collectors are pretty much divided into these two groups, also.

Many people, especially younger ones, view the 1950s as a time of carefree happy days. The T.V. show “Happy Days” did a lot to help that a long. But, in fact, the decade was filled with rules and restrictions, the result of which caused the backlash among younger people in the 1960s.  But recently collectors have been resurrecting and rediscovering the era, albeit while wearing rose-colored glasses.

However, the 1950s was a decade of creative solutions and bold designs. Objects once outdated, corny and embarrassing, whose final resting place was yard sales and thrift stores, are now found in pricey shops in major cities. This serious second look from dealers,. collectors and architects transcends all the outlandish fads, weird shapes, silly ideas and annoying colors. What they’re now seeing are progressive designs and superb workmanship, mostly on the high-end pieces. 

Transitional best describes the Fifties decade. America was passing out of the dark, serious, wartime 1940s into a colorful era of discovery, experimentation, and prosperity. Veterans were starting families in the suburban developments like Levittown in both Long Island and southeastern Pennsylvania. Mom’s found themselves bound by their apron strings in the kitchen while dads went off to work. Dwight Eisenhower led the country while Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle dominated centerfield. And automobiles were large, showy, and powerful.  

Designers, fueled by the exploration of outer space, applied the graceful, soft curves and lines of Art Deco to furniture and appliances, which took on streamlined, futuristic shapes. When the Russians launched the world’s first satellite, Sputnik, in October 1957, merchandise that resembled sleek spacecraft seemed all the more apropos for the times.

News broadcasts came over Bakelite and C radios that sported rounded, curved lines and often bold coloring. Designers adopted shiny chrome for lamps, table and chair legs, blenders, toasters, and waffle irons. Tubular steel added simplicity, beauty and durability to furniture and accessories. Lighting fixtures and clocks sprouted appendages resembling sparkling celestial bodies or satellites.

For the growing middle class, manufacturers employed chrome's step-sister, aluminum, to mass-produce inexpensive tumblers, goblets, cocktail shakers, trays and ice buckets. Plastic, especially red, could be found in most kitchens in condiment containers and curtains. Cabinets contained Fiesta ware, simple, pastel-colored dishes for everyday use.

Decorative figurines became popular. No living room was complete without a black ceramic panther slinking on a tabletop or used as a lamp base. Small ceramic lamps with a doll, animal, or other figure, marketed as the perfect little glow to set atop the TV, supposedly helped to save viewers’ eyesight in darkened rooms.

Coffee tables assumed the shape of boomerangs. Wall clocks looked like exploding, atoms or models of molecular structure. Kitchen tables, made of durable Formica in bright red, yellow, and often turquoise, complemented shiny white enamel hanging cabinets. Builders of new suburban homes tiled the bathrooms in black and pink or sea green. 

In the better part of towns, a sophisticated 1950's home might contain a pair of Eero Saarinen's all-enveloping womb chairs in bright red, or had as its piece de resistance a free form, walnut and glass coffee table designed by Isamu Noguchi. 

Baby boomers, looking to recall items with which they grew up, have fueled the current interest in what’s now commonly referred to as the Mid-Century Modern style—taking in the 1950s and 1960s. They perceive the Fifties as an innocent time compared to now.

Manufacturers designed products for the Machine Age, using mass-production and assembly line methods. Thus, many of today’s collectors seek pieces developed by specific designers whose creations bring higher prices.

Charles Eames worked for the Herman Miller Company of Zeeland, Mich. He popularized furniture made of laminated plywood and bentwood. George Nelson, also of Herman Miller, designed clocks and furniture. Paul Frankl designed furniture from the 1920s to the 1950s. Influenced by Art Deco, he used both geometric and curved shapes. His simple, black and white, curved lacquered pine tables and desks today sell for several thousand dollars each.

Knoll International of New York employed Eero Saarinen. Best-known for his molded plastic womb chair, he worked also in cast aluminum. Italian immigrant and sculptor Harry Bertoia also designed for Knoll, where he pioneered in using metal rods and wire in side and lounge chairs. And Gilbert Rohde, also associated with the Herman Miller Company, combined traditional mahogany and maple with chrome and glass.

Russel Wright worked in glass, plastics, aluminum, textiles, pottery and furniture. He designed tableware for the Steubenville Pottery Company, Iroquois China Company, and Harker Chinaware. And he developed furniture for Knoll and Heywood Wakefield.

Unlike painters, these artists didn’t sign their work, so collectors need to learn to identify furniture by shapes, materials, and quality of workmanship. Although the furniture usually had manufacturer data on paper labels, many of the labels have long since fallen off.

Other companies mass-produced less expensive look-alike imitations of designer furniture. And the U.S. courts refused to allow the original designers to legally. protect their work, which further complicated matters.

Fifties merchandise sells consistently well, especially chrome kitchen appliances, decanters, cake covers and lazy Susans. During the 1990s, items from the 1950s was cheap by today’s standards. But as the popularity of these items has grown, so have the prices. Aluminum Christmas trees, illuminated by a revolving color wheel, are a good example. Once castaways, they now sell for over $150.

And while Fifties kitchen appliances are still popular with collectors, especially if they’re in excellent condition, the market for them has softened somewhat.  However, colorful Bakelite and Catalin radios still sell for three figures.

As far as selling items from the 1950s, both eBay and Etsy are probably the best bet. Selling them at yard or garage sales or fleamarkets won’t really yield much of a profit. Regardless of the site, the Internet offers a global market with the possibility of selling at higher prices.   

The consensus among dealers today is that a lot of 1950s furnishings sit in attics, basements, and thrift shops waiting to be purchased for a song by the wise buyer who has memorized the music. And that means that happy days may be making comeback.

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 "Advertising of the Past" in the 2023 Spring Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.