Haberdashery - aholic!

I think that I'm gradually becoming a bit obsessed with old haberdashery! I mostly buy it for making jewellery, but I have started buying some of it just because of the packaging. Especially the Newey brand, as there are so many different styles of packaging all the way through from the end of the 19th century to when the Birmingham based compnay closed in the late 70s or early 80s.

Here are some of my recently found treasures!

Carefully collected and sewn onto card by Grace Dow

Thanks for collecting them Grace whoever you are, I hope you'd be pleased that they'll soon be recycled into pendants and necklaces

 I got this whole box of Newey hooks and eyes in their original supplier box. I think they are late 1940s in date.

Not sure I can bring myself to cut these off the cards!

These are also Neweys and are older from the 20s or early 30s, the square card is really unusual. These won't get used for jewellery I don't think.



At the Antique Textile Fair in Manchester the other week I got these lovely mother of pearl buttons. When I got home I discovered the old French newspaper stuck on the back. Not sure of the year, but the headline is "Paix et du Pain" and talks about unrest in Berlin and Amsterdam.

I've already made some of these into earrings

Top Drawer 2012 - Earl Court

2012 kicked off in a busy style with lots of prep for this enormous Trade Fair in Earls Court London. I designed my stand differently (scroll down for a peek) redesigned and updated my catalogue, and made one or two new designs to boot.

I'm really pleased with how it looked! I even took my Mum's old button tin with lots of old haberdashery spilling out of it to show what the jewellery is made from.

I included some of the old lacemaker samples that I've found too.

The show was quieter than last year (in our section at least) but I did take orders and make some valuable contacts. I met the buyer from the V&A - I'd really love to sell my jewellery there! And I'm another step closer to my jewellery being sold in Kensington Palace too- I got the email to set me up as a supplier today!

Last year I was lucky enough to make friends with 3 other jewellery makers (links at the bottom of the blog) and we all made sure we were next to each other, went out for meals and helped each other out. I needed extra help as I had a problem with my car, had to stay another night and needed rescuing by the RAC! Not a great end to the show. I like doing shows, but this is a stressful one - driving in central London, 700 other stands- which is rather overwhelming, especially when you are competing with really big business and mass produced products too. Not for the faint hearted!

Thanks to Amanda Coleman, - lovely silver and gold plated jewellery featuring birds, spiders, dragonflies and synchronised swimmers! Dee Barnes - colourful printed vinyl jewellery and especially Kate Hamilton Hunter, - recycled biscuit tin jewellery, as she put me up for an extra night.

Button heaven

I've found some great buttons recently. Like this great sample card from the early 20th century, probably the 1920s or 30s I think, for shirt buttons.

You can imagine some salesman carrying this sample card around to tailors and dressmakers and extolling the virtures of these buttons. It's amazing if you look closely, across the top are the different qualities of buttons from clear to strong to wavy and various combinations of these sadly I don't think the photos will show up the differences.

At the bottom are the different styles of shirt buttons, all of which I have met before when making earrings and bracelets in my Vintage Collection
But don't worry this card will staying intact!

Vintage mother of pearl button and silver bracelet 

Colourful buttons
I've been rummaging in boxes at a couple of antique fairs and have managed to find some lovely vintage coloured buttons which I will use to make rings and brooches like these.

A collection of these brooches are in my shop at madebyhandonline.com

1950s button card

Buttons from the 1930s, 40s and 50s

Vintage Finds

Yesterday I went to the Vintage Fashion and Textile fair run by Decorative Fairs  at Chester racecourse. I was on the hunt for some more haberdashery to make into jewellery. After a bit of rummaging I came home with a good haul....


Vintage haberdashery heaven

 The 1940s and 50s buckles I'll use to make brooches like this one below, they are all one offs, at the moment you can only get them from me at Craft fairs and events.

Vintage Buckle brooch

I found a box full of tiny snippets of lace - not whole pieces, just parts of patterns, they must have been part of a lacemaker's sample box, because some of them have little notes attached to them with instructions on how to make them and if you look at the picture you can see one with a customer's name - Mrs Potter. So lovely to find these samples of another maker's work and to be able to use them, not leave them in a box.


Lace samples



I'm looking forward to using these pieces of lace to make some one off pieces in my new collection - Vintage Lace. I wonder if this lacemaker was like me and finished her samples hours before she sent off to sell her lace to a client or at went to some fair? (I finished the first samples for the Vintage Lace collection less than 24hrs before the British Craft Trade Fair a fortnight ago!) I wish I knew the names of these makers, such a lot of work and skill and nobody to credit for it.

Vintage Lace - Fiorenza earrings

Vintage Lace - Fiorenza necklace