4 posts tagged “vintage”
It is time for another Etsy mini trend - I have noticed a growing amount of bijouterie that features flower glass beads, most notably vintage and new Czech flowers. For me personally it is a pleasure to see, as I have since loved the produce of Czech glass beads manufacturers (the history of Czech glass huts is amazing and interesting!). Especially the vintage Czech glass flowers were produced in glass huts of German origin - German bead makers were among the best and most influential in pre-war Bohemia. As always, I used Etsy's poster sketch tool to make a collage of my personal flowerlies favourites (all earrings).
Interesting read: Baubles, Buttons and Beads: The Heritage of Bohemia, by Sybille Jargstorf.
Another Etsy mini trend that I have been watching evolve in 2007: prints (and illustrations) on vintage or antique book pages. These here are my favourites.
See all Etsy mini trend posts here.
I remember that my grandmother had a necklace that featured pods similar to these - lipstick red and yummy. These beads are made of opaque, highly saturated glass and come in at least five colours, as you can see in the poster above. They were produced in Czechoslovakia around the middle of the last century, and it looks like today they're mostly available on the US vintage bead market. Strangely enough, they seem nowhere to be found around Germany or Europe (after all, we're not only neighbours, but some of the best glass huts before the war were German). On Etsy, these beads are usually called mod pod or simply pod, but I have also seen other names adapted straight from bead resellers.
When I joined Etsy two years ago, I came across Gemmafactrix, who uses red pods in her work and whose earrings reminded me of my grandmother. As far as I can remember, her shop was the first to feature pods on Etsy. The pod craze soon took off and spread, and it's still running, as you can see. There are pods now everywhere on Etsy, and they come in designs to fit quite a broad range of tastes.
Previous mini trends: Enamel Bell Flowers | Relics and Specimens
I've noticed that Etsy, the microcosm of creative talents and indie design goods, produces mini trends on quite a regular basis. Currently, it seems that enamel flowers, and especially flower buds, are quite a hot commodity. I've put all I could find today into a poster.
Update Dec. 20th: more enamel bell flowers (though one is and unintended double - sorry!):