B for Brass in the A to Z blogging challenge. It’s all about online jewellery collections.
So you discover an online museum collection. How do you even start looking among thousands of pieces? You don’t even know what there is to look for.
In an online collection, you make your own walk, and you get to see so much more than the selected pieces that are on display in the museum. Perhaps you are looking for something specific, or you just do some online strolling, to see what you find.
Just to give you an example, here are a few things I found when I searched for “brass” in different collections.
In the digital collection of Nordiska Museet I found quite a few bride crowns. This one spoke to me. Brass and silver. Elegant and simple. A Mrs Lydia Flood sold it to the museum in 1924.
In the collection of the the Museum of Fine Arts Boston I found this folding fan. From France, 1880’s, given to the museum in 1976 as part of the Oldham collection. Do you know what, I’m tempted to read the archive text as poetry:
“White silk gauze leaf
trimmed
heavily
with brass and steel sequins
in conventionalized design;
gilt-silver and yellow silk yarns
across top.
Twelve carved ivory sticks
decorated
with brass and steel piqué work.”
Finally, at the Museum of New Zealand, I found a pendant made by perspex. What’s that? Well, I didn’t know either, but I do now, after reading about it. With this pendant, we can imagine the stories of love and war, of waiting and desperate longing. That urge in us human beings to create, to craft with what we have at hand, to express and give objects meaning. See and read about the “Sweetheart” pendant directly on the museum website.
All this just to say that when you enter huge online archives, one single word can bring you in any direction. Stay open for what you come across.
galeriaredelius 
How interesting! I love what you are doing with your challenge.
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Thank you!
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“Sweetheart” pendant – what fantastic piece in all its details … brass, nothing I would connect with jewelry. Gunilla, you are doing a fantastic job with the challenge.
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Thank you Viveka! I have been using brass myself, to get the gold colour without the costs ;-). It’s not that easy to work with, but lately I’ve started liking the mix of silver and gold colour, and then brass is a good metail to use.
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I suppose … that all metals can really be used for jewelry.
Look at all the modern s/st jewelry – with diamonds.
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Reading the archive text as poetry … yes …it really works G !
The link to the ‘perspex’ heart was interesting, how must the young woman waiting back home have felt to receive this simple but meaningful little pendant …
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I always like reading texts written by specialists, a peek into the “geekery” of different fields. I have the same when people describe a wine in many and lenghty sentences, even a restaurant menu can be like poetry (or is that only when I’m very hungry…?)
And yes, the far away soldier and his woman, if we only knew what went through their heads.
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cool blog! i like brass, cheaper than gold for me. i cant enamel on it as it has tin added these days but i could incorporate it in a piece-
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I didn’t know there is also tin in brass alloys, thought it was only copper and zinc, but with different proportions (?). I like brass too, although it oxidises pretty fast. I’m not that far yet that I know how to best protect the brass from oxidation.
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