Jewelry made from antique broken calendar plates...
Antique calendar plate from 1909 with lots of damage
I have a great love for these old advertising calendar plates....they seem to be one of those things that combine everything that I love in one package: it's a plate, it's old, it's got a beautiful floral transferware design on it....but most especially, it marks a certain point in time. In this case, 1909.
Let's see....in 1909 a newspaper cost 1 cent, coffee was 20 cents a pound, (tea was $1 for 2 lbs, by the way), and a pair of children's shoes cost about $1.50! Hershey bars were 2 cents, but they were a lot smaller than today's 1.65 oz, weighing in at 9/16 oz! To put things a bit more into perspective, the average wage was 22 cents per hour, and the average worker made about $350 a year. We can only wonder what things will be like 100 years from now...
Cracked antique calendar plate from 1909
William Carlos Williams published his first book of poetry in 1909, and Pablo Picasso first began dabbling in cubism...
Necklace that I hand crafted from a broken 1909 calendar plate (sold)
Pin brooch I handcrafted from 1909 calendar plate (sold)
Here are a few necklaces that I just made from the broken plate shown above:
September 1909 available here
September 1909 available here
November 1909 necklace available here
November 1909 necklace available here
What do you think? Do you like these?