Inside Out

 

QUESTION: While browsing a recent antique show, I discovered a delightful little copper box with what looked like an embossed design. The dealer told me it was probably made around the turn of the 20th century or at least before World War I. She said the design was repoussé on copper. I’d like to know more about this repousse technique. Can you give me a bit of history and an explanation of how it’s done?

ANSWER: There are two techniques for hammering copper—chasing and repousse. The difference between the two is that chasing pushes the metal in from the front side while repousse pushes the metal out from the backside.  Both techniques frequently employ a backing to support the work material and confine the movement of the metal to the immediate area around the tool.

While the word repoussé comes from the French word repoussage, meaning "pushed up," the word chasing, which also derives from the French word chasser, meaning ”to drive out.” Repousse is a metalworking technique in which an artisan shaped a malleable metal by hammering from the reverse side to create a design in low relief. Chasing is a similar technique in which the piece is hammered on the front side, sinking the metal. The two techniques are often used in conjunction. Many metals can be used for chasing and repoussé work, including gold, silver, copper, and alloys such as steel, bronze, and pewter. Tool marks are often intentionally left visible.

With the simplest technique, sheet gold could be pressed into designs carved in intaglio in stone, bone, metal or even materials such as jet. The gold could be worked into the designs with wood tools or, more commonly, by hammering a wax or lead "force" over it.

Both techniques date from antiquity and have been used widely with gold and silver for fine detailed work, such as the burial mask of King Tutankhamun, and copper, tin, and bronze for larger sculptures, such as the Statue of Liberty. Both methods require only the simplest tools and materials, and yet allow great diversity of expression. They’re also more affordable, since there’s no loss or waste of metal, which mostly retains its original size and thickness.

Before the use of repousse, ancient artisans pressed gold sheet into a die to work it over a design in cameo relief. Here the detail would be greater on the back of the final design, so some final chasing from the front was often carried out to sharpen the detail.

In 1400 BCE, ancient Egyptians used resin and mud as a softer backing for repoussé. The use of patterned punches dates back to the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE  Craftsman made the simplest patterned punches using loops or scrolls of wire.

By 400 BCE., the ancient Greeks had begun using a combination of punches and dies on a beeswax backing to produce repousse on their bronze armor plates.

The resurgence of repousse and chasing first occurred in England during the late 19th century as part of the British Arts & Crafts Movement. Most notably was the work produced at the Keswick School of Industrial Arts, founded in 1884 by Canon Hardwicke and his wife, Edith Rawnsley, as an evening class in woodwork and repoussé metalwork at the Crosthwaite Parish Rooms, in Keswick, Cumbria. Hardwicke designed the curriculum to alleviate unemployment. The school  prospered, and within 10 years more than 100 men had attended classes. 

The school prospered and swiftly developed a reputation for high quality copper and silver decorative metalwork. By 1888 nearly 70 men were attending the classes. By 1890 the school was exhibiting nationally and winning prizes; Its students numbering over 100,  it had outgrown its cramped home in the parish rooms, forcing Rawnsley to raise funds for a purpose-built school nearby.

The Newlyn Industrial Class, later renamed the Newlyn Art Metal Industry, established in 1890 by John D. Mackensie, was similar to Keswick and shared a common purpose with it. Inspired by the teachings of John Ruskin, they aimed to provide a source of employment in small communities where work came and went with the seasons. At the Newlyn classes, held in a net loft above a fish-curing yard, the pupils were mainly fishermen, while at Keswick students were pencil makers, laborers, gardeners, shepherds, and tailors.

Both metal workshops specialized in the production of repoussé copper work, This technique and material was popular with amateur craftsmen and women across the country because it was easy to learn. A student placed a flat piece of copper face down on a bed of pitch, or, as in the Newlyn workshops, lead. These materials were chosen because they would yield to the force of the blows of the punch but would still support the metal. Once a student had punched the design out from the reverse, he or she turned the metal over and chased finer details on the front.

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Tiny Collectibles from World War II

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.