Dressing Table Set In Silver. English Work From The Broadway House § Co, 1919.

Broadway and Co, Birmingham - Lovely Silver Hairdressing Kit comprising a dark circular mirror hand facepiece, hairbrush, collar or clothes brush and brown tortoiseshell comb. Of Rococo atours, a voluble decoration nicely chiseled underlines the perimeter of each piece: beaded, volutes and foliage reinceaux, palmettes side by side with florets, rosebuds arranged in staples, sprigs of lily of the valley freely poured out. Bordered with flowery interlacing, large so-called "mirrored" cartridges surmounted by stylized flower tabs adorn the handle, the grip of the face-to-hand, of the hairbrush. Characteristic of the ornamental repertoire of the Victorian era, winged cherub heads with slender faces surrounded by fine curly hair twirl on the medallion of the mirror, the oval of the hairbrush; on its back, the clothes brush is similarly covered by their smiling presence. Sheathed in black percaline enhanced with a thread with flower motifs gilded with a small iron, a case marked by the London Baggage House "Cheney of London" encloses in the folds of a white satin trim the parts of this hairdressing kit. Executed in the first half of the 20th century by the Broadway firm § Co-founded in 1901 in Birmingham by William Benjamin Broadway, one of the main British manufacturers of female and male toiletries, shaped pieces (candlesticks, candlesticks, timpani, frame -photos, ..) in silver-, this Hairdressing set is to be compared by its Neo-Victorian Style mixed with Rococo to certain models offered by its London counterparts Daniel Low and Co or Unger Brothers. In their respective sales catalogs, these toiletries intended for a select female clientele are associated with attractive designations: "Narcissus" (1901), "Love and Dream" (1904) - the latter quite appropriate to the Narcissus that we let's present. England, Birmingham. First half of the 20th century. -Excellent state of preservation. To offer or to treat oneself, this attractive hairdressing kit imbued with the Victorian aestheticism specific to British goldsmithing will delight everyone. Arranged on a dressing table, on a chest of drawers, it will infuse, like the angelic Cherubs embroidering its main accessories, a note of soft and smiling femininity to these pieces of furniture. Placed in a display case alongside odor boxes, jewelry, earthenware and porcelain trinkets, ivory or Chinese lacquer objects, it will revive the memory of a refined art of living immortalized by the photographer Eugène Atget in his "Interiors parisiens "(1910) and, still very much alive in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century.