Featured Age & Origin of Tortoiseshell hair pin

Hi all, I have been eyeing on this hair pin for months, just very curious about its age and origin? It doesn’t look like Japanese work to me, and the seller offers a lot of European stuff… what do you think?

Again, I don’t use hair pin at all but the design is cool

 

It's a decorative hair comb. With a meander motif which is unusual to my eye. Things like this still made (to accessorize Spanish traditional dress, for instance) but of plastic so, if indeed of tortoise shell, will be old. Probably ate 1800s to compliment late-Victorian hair styles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meander_(art)

Debora

 

Here's something grander with same motif and shape. Seller says Empire so perhaps yours reflects an earlier fashion.

https://galeriepenelope.com/product...n_customer_id=&lang=en&variant=39911944650910

 

Thank you! Wow this one is so pretty. Yet they still used celluloid for one with such quality. If the one I posted is 1800s as well I will surely have one for my collection!

 

B

tw I think this is Greek key? But in China we have a similar pattern and the little bar details give me Chinese vibe somehow…

PS: I wonder if this is indeed original Greek key pattern or a later version adapted in China

 

Did you read the Wikipedia link?

Debora

 

Yes it says Chinese meander might be influenced by the Greek key, so wondering if there is a way to tell the difference between the Greek version and Chinese one

 

Why don't you provide us with this key information. Where in the world is this comb located?

Debora

 

I found it in China, that’s why I smelled the possibility of it being a Chinese reproduction made probably in the late 20th century they made all kinds of stuff with tortoiseshell, ivory, etc. And the hair comb looks really easy to make. But this one is cheap anyway, yet it would be great if it’s indeed 1800s

 

That would have been helpful for you to have shared in your initial post.

Debora

 

I will remember to do so next time it’s just many here have already known I’m in China & assuming everything I post is in China so keep forgetting that haha

 

Looks European inspired. To be worn on a low chignon, as Debora's picture shows. The quality is not 19th century European, so I would agree, Chinese made.

That one is Empire style (French), but not of the period. The French Empire period is early 19th century, Napoleonic. Celluloid was invented in the 1850s.

Agree, it is the Chinese pattern. The meander motif is traditional in many parts of the world, but the connectors make this one Chinese.

 

Haha okay I noticed it’s either poorly bitten or poorly made. If that’s the later case I will probably leave it alone or buy it for some conversion project, i.e. do some inlay work?

 

For a tortoiseshell box?
It is probably new tortoiseshell, but I know Chinese authorities are not very bothered with protected species legislation.

 

That’s a possibility But as far as I know they use new tortoiseshell to make stupid and ugly beads. Could be a Chinese export piece… I should have known real European pieces are hard to come by here!

I’m afraid the only creature they care is Panda

 

That’s a possibility But as far as I know they use new tortoiseshell to make stupid and ugly beads. Could be a Chinese export piece… I should have known real European pieces are hard to come by here!

I’m afraid the only creature they care is Panda

 

Symbolic and diplomatic value.

 

I have always preferred red panda but they live not only in China, so didn’t get that much attention

 

So have I, they are so cute.