Ladies ::: The Ordinal Amethyst Hatpin

WOW !!!! she has done it Again The Ordinal Amethyst Hatpin


http://ordinalmalaprop.com/engine/2009/06/08/ordinal-amethyst-hatpin#comment-1059
The hatpin (or hat pin) seems to have had its origin in the 1400's, when women used small pins to attach their wimples and veils to their hair.
By the Victorian Era, large brimmed hats perched upon elaborately coifed tresses necessitated the use of something more substantial and decorative, and the hatpin became not just a fastener, but a piece of jewelry. It was not unusual for a young lady to spend as much for a hatpin as for a hat and to acquire several pins, which she would display in a hatpin holder on her dressing table. (The holders, often beautiful pieces of porcelain or other materials, are themselves highly prized by collectors.)
But fashions change, and though hatpins are still being made today for limited use, they began their decline during the Roaring Twenties, when shorter hairstyles and simpler hats (or no hats) rendered them superfluous - and collectible.
As examples of the jeweler's craft, Victorian, Art Nouveau, and Art Deco hatpins can easily fetch from $50 to $1000+ each, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by the dishonest. In fact, The American Hatpin Society website estimates that up to 90% of all hatpins on the market are fakes!
Hatpins are generally 6 to 12 inches long and consist of a decorative head, finding, and stem. The finding, the part where the head and stem connect, is a particularly valuable aid to authenticating a piece. Findings styles changed over time, and many fakes have been exposed by the usage of contemporary findings to assemble, for example, "Victorian-era" pins.



A woman's crowning glory, whether behatted or not, has always been her hair. Accessories include slides, ribbons, clasps, combs, pins and scratching sticks, but hatpins are the most highly collected items known as "hair jewelry." The key collectible period for hatpins begins around 1875 and ends with the Great War when button-ended pins bearing regimental crests were the essential accessory for patriotic women.
In the 1890s hats sat upon a seemingly ridiculous height of hair that was the fashion of the time. The hatpin became the mainstay of every woman's coiffure and chapeau. These hats were decorated with buckles, beads, flowers and even fully stuffed birds and ostrich plumes. Three to six hatpins were required to balance them, some measuring eighteen inches long. Newspaper stories of that time tell of numerous accidents and at least one shopper being blinded in a buying frenzy at a sale. In some American states hatpins were judged to be lethal weapons and banned. Prior to the 1832 invention of the pin-making machine, the theft of handmade pins was a hanging offense. Taxes were levied to pay for the Queen's pins and the purchase of handmade pins by her subjects was limited to the first day of the New Year. Women saved for that 'pin-day," which was perhaps the origin of the expression, "pin money." Pins were so expensive and treasured, the handmade variety were named in bequests and legacies. The hat has been referred to as a "symbol of woman's emancipation. The hat, from the beginning of time, was more than a head-covering. It was the symbol of ones station in life--or more correctly--man's station. We are all familiar with the expression, "He wore many hats."
At that time women didn't wear hats She wore a hood, wimple or a bonnet with strings drawn tightly under her chin. It was in the loosening and the eventual cutting of those bonnet strings that encouraged women to break away from the hearth and home. Prior to 1832, small handmade pins with decorative heads were used to secure lace caps, mobcaps, veils and other pinnings to heads and body attire, and it was not until the introduction of stringless "bonnets" that the Period Hatpin became popular.


The first hatpins were simple base metal skewers; and later they were made with silver stems and studded with cairngorm, topaz, garnet, amethyst, jet, moonstone or pearl. Other examples featured a sea shell, glass, ivory or a ceramic ornament. Small or large, the hats worn by 'sportin' women sat on top the puffed hair or Psyche knot and securely fastened in place with hatpins. The most popular sporting hat was the sailor with its small, low crown and very wide brim which was held straight on the head by a pair of hatpins. Sporting hatpins were made with end pieces shaped like golf or hockey sticks as well as varieties bearing horseshoes, musical instruments or tiny animal forms. These following features are found on the most highly rated hatpins: Adjustable ends - however the pin had been inserted in the hat, the glittering stone could still be swiveled to catch the light. Crested porcelain button ends -look for famous maker, Goss. Some had screw-end containers. These might reveal a tiny mirror and powder puff, or even a vinaigrette, a container for smelling salts.

A hair jewelry auction was held in 1980 when Clive Marchant, who had been a hatpinologist for 21 years, parted with his 2,000 "hatpins of filigree work, pique, simulated pique, mosaic, precious and semi-precious metals in both classical and Art Nouveau styles, souvenirs of Irland, birds modeled in glass, ivory, regimental badges."

Millers price guide reveals five metal and paste bejeweled hatpins" 1900-15 at $50-$75 each. From the Fifties are a ball-ended filigree metal pin priced from $12 to $16, and three sequin-topped pins together worth a similar amount. Unusual hatpins which are rare finds for the collector are those carved in ivory and the 19th century art form of Satsuma with its mellow ivory tint. The fine enamel colors of Indian red, green, blue, purple, black and yellow with gilding and silvering, are excellent examples of the minutely painted hatpin ornament known as Satsuma-ware. http://www.antiqueshoppefl.com/archives/hatpins.html
HATPIN A DANGEROUS WEAPON;
Boston Lawmaker Calls the Use of Long Ones a Murderous Practice.
February 1, 1911, Wednesday
Page 5, 347 words
BOSTON, Jan. 31. -- "If I should carry a fish knife as long as this I would be arrested as a dangerous character," said Representative Newton to-day, holding up an eighteen-inch hatpin to the Legislative Committee on Legal Affairs, before which he appeared in support of a bill to limit the length of hatpins.

http://www.gunsandswords.com/u-s-hat-pin.html

Unlike some collectibles, hat pins have some rather unique historic milestones to their name. In the early 1900's, popular music hall actresses in America and Britain made popular the wearing of enormous, heavy hats that required a sturdy pin to keep in place. To hold these ornate confections, longer pins were introduced until around 1908, when a series of laws were introduced to limit the size of these "deadly weapons."Fearing that suffragettes would use their hatpins as weapons, the legal length was limited to 9 inches from end to end and many women were forced to trim down their pins (and tone down their hats!) to stay within the law.
http://www.miniatures-and-collectibles.com/hat-pins.html
Pictures of the hatpin on Flickr
Purchase it inworld at my usual Caledon Shop, you know where it is I am sure
Xstreet Listing
There are all sorts of fascinating Historical Details existant regarding Hatpins; or, at least, slightly diverting ones. For instance, this particular Hatpin would have been illegal to wear in public (without a licence) in Arkansas or Illonois after 1908, due to it being slightly over Nine Inches in Length. Such laws do not exist in Caledon or in general upon the Grid, but I would advise Purchasers not to jab too many people in the Behind, as this may be Socially Unacceptable.
A free Hatpin, incidentally, to the first Commenter pointing out the hidden meaning in the design.
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With out a doubt Breezy's ((and many others)) Most Outstanding fun clever and favorite on Grid !!! When she creates something New ... It is indeed A Very Big Big Big Deal .. Thank YOU !!! Twirlsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss xoxox !!

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