Antiques Magazine Archive, August 2013

Brooches are such beautiful items of jewellery, often referred to as vintage they are the final touch to an outfit and certainly add certain sophistication to any costume. Of course any brooch more than a hundred years old is not vintage, but an antique and you may not be too keen to wear it if you’ve paid a good deal of money for it. It may form part of a collection, although it’s a shame if you don’t, no one else gets to see it but you.

Glass and light, light and glass and all the colours they create and all the corners they light up. What isn’t to love about glass, ornate glass, coloured glass especially, when it’s combined with lights and you can see in it a million different colours and shapes. Antique glass is especially beautiful for many different reasons and for surviving through centuries of change and keeping its fragile self-whole.

I want to talk about glass, antique glass. It is loved and used for many different reasons. For those lovers of all things Victorian; whose sole intention is to interiorly decorate a room or a whole house in the style of gothic or Victorian style, will especially love antique glass. If you’re looking to add a final touch to a theme you’ve been developing in a room, then lighting is crucial and the addition of a Victorian lamp almost mandatory. You may just be looking for a little Victorian touch in your house rather than going the whole hog. If so, a Victorian light can make such a different and antique glass lamps are still extremely popular despite more modern and technologically innovative lighting.

Swords can tell a story, one of heroism or cowardice, action or inaction, fighting to the death, or defending one’s honour. Swords are collectors pieces and naturally, like most antiques, the older they are the more they are worth. Japanese swords are particularly popular and these are without doubt swords with a long and noble history. Although the most popular Japanese swords are those from the Second World War period, they go back many centuries.

In fact, swords go back across Japan’s entire historical period with sword making becoming more and more sophisticated as time wore on. Some of the earliest weapons go as far back as 2000 BC, which were normally imported from Korea or China, where they first appeared. Japanese sword makers would begin making theirs around 700 AD and would become some of the finest swords ever made.