Broadway and Co, Birmingham– Lovely Hairdressing Kit in silver including a face-to-hand dark of a circular mirror, a hair brush, a collar or clothes brush and comb in brown tortoiseshell.
Of finery Rococo, a beautifully chiseled, voluble decoration underlines the perimeter of each piece: pearls, volutes and leafy reinceaux, palmettes rub shoulders with small flowers, rosebuds arranged in clasps, sprigs of lily of the valley freely spread. Bordered with floral interlacings, ample cartouches called " in mirror » topped with stylized flower stems adorn the handle, the grip of the face-to-hand, of the hairbrush.
Characteristics of Victorian era ornamental repertoire, heads of Winged Cherubim with slender faces surrounded by fine curly hair, the oval of the hairbrush swirls on the mirror's medallion; on its reverse, the clothes brush is similarly traversed by their smiling presence.
Covered in black percaline enhanced with a net with fleur-de-lis patterns gilded with a small iron, a case marked with the London Luggage House “Cheney of London” encloses the pieces of this hairdressing kit in the folds of a white satin trim.
Executed in the first half of the 20th century by the firm Broadway § Co -founded in 1901 in Birmingham by William Benjamin Broadway, one of the leading British manufacturers of women's and men's toiletry kits, shaped pieces (candlesticks, candlesticks, cups, photo frames, etc.) in silver, this Hairdressing kit is to be compared by its Neo-Victorian style mixed with Rococo of some models proposed by its London counterparts Daniel Low and Co ou 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 entirely appropriate to the Necessary that we are presenting.
England, Birmingham. First half of the 20th century.
-Excellent state of preservation.
To offer or to treat yourself, this attractive hairdressing kit imbued with Victorian aesthetics unique to British goldsmithing will delight everyone.
Placed on a dressing table or on a chest of drawers, it will breathe, like angelica, cherubim giving its main accessories a note of soft and smiling femininity to these pieces of furniture.
Placed in a display case alongside scent boxes, jewelry boxes, earthenware and porcelain trinkets, ivory or Chinese lacquer objects, it will revive the memory ofan art of living refined immortalized by the photographer Eugène Atget in his “Parisian Interiors” (1910) and still very much alive in Europe in the first half of the XNUMXth century.
S.-L.
