Antique Store with an Archive.

Reuniting the pieces we hold with their history and the humans behind them.

Each item comes with its own annotation card - similar to a museum label.

Historic Context Reunited

Every piece on this website comes with its own annotation card. The card is modeled after a museum label, so it stays short and specific to the history, and it tells you more about the piece than you would usually get from an antique store.

IM-0001 Accession no.

Object

Hairwork Mourning Brooch

Date made 1868

Origin England

Materials Human hair, glass, gold-filled brass

Context

Woven hair set under glass in a gold-filled surround, with the brooch fitting soldered to the reverse. The hair is worked in a flat plait of the kind made at home from a tress cut before burial, then trimmed, mounted and sealed by a jeweller.

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Recently Catalogued

Clover-shaped porcelain ashtray and cigarette rest

IM-0089

IM-0089 One only

Clover-shaped porcelain ashtray and cigarette rest

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Porcelain ashtray and cigarette rest in the shape of a four-leaf clover, with a hand-coloured green ground, a printed rose and four cigarette rests in copper...

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Pearl Luster Ceramic Match Holder with Anemones

IM-0099

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Pearl Luster Ceramic Match Holder with Anemones

1950

A ceramic holder in pearl luster with a pocket above and a tray below, printed with anemones. Holds matches and a matchbox, or cigarettes.

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IM-0121

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Heart Shaped Floral Hair Receiver

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A heart-shaped porcelain hair receiver decorated with violets, made in Austria for an American importer. Hair from the brush went in through the lid and came...

$45.00

Stories

Now and then something arrives with enough left on it to write more than a card.

The Hair Receiver, what is this antique jar with a hole in the lid?!

PLATE III

Mystery objects

The Hair Receiver, what is this antique jar with a hole in the lid?!

Have you come across one of these? A small porcelain jar from somebody's dresser, possible flowers painted on the lid and a very odd round hole in the middle of it. You may have come across one of these: I often watch as people pick it up and turn it over, and then they put it back, because the hole makes no sense -- and what would they even use it for?!

Read the piece