Featured Gatierre, Danbiere & Other Mysteries

Here's a link to the full size image - if you open in new tab, you can enlarge it quite a bit.
https://imgur.com/oKuz9qA

 

Hello, CVirtue, if you're still out there. I'm the originator of this thread, but have been on hiatus. As far as I know, I'm the first person to really take an interest in this line of products and to link them with one another, which sort of makes me the world expert.

However, maddeningly, I have never found a single solid fact about the manufacturer. In the Antiques Roadshow segment, where someone brought in a couple of the Wyon plaques, the expert tells them they were being made in England in the 1960s. I do not know how he was able to determine this. A manufacturer's catalogue would be a handy thing to have, but it seems to me they took pains not to be identified.

In some respects the operation reminds me of the original Incolay Studios, started, in the 1960s, by a polymer chemist husband and an artistic wife. These also use what could be novel and proprietary materials & methods coupled with a very savvy sense of what would hold popular appeal. Who knows? Perhaps they saw themselves as competing with Incolay, whose 'stone' does not accurately mimic anything in nature, while our subject's 'marble' fools people all the time. Did they draw some inspiration from the decorative items, including some of the same Wyon plaques, made by Henry Elkington in the 19th century? In which direction did influence with Henryk Winograd flow?

You are right to note that the process could not use a single rigid mold to produce Nouveau Lady. One would need to be able to compare at least several examples to see whether undercut areas show the variation of hand work or are identical, indicating use of a mold. They cranked out an awful lot of her.

Even the AR appraiser admits these pieces are of very high quality. I'm not sure I have ever seen a Nouveau Lady brooch that did not have a sterling frame. This detail is part of what makes people see her as 'real'. However, I have to doubt whether your red stones are garnet, although of course I have no way to rule it out.

I appreciate that you have contributed to the info available on line regarding the nature of these pieces. Sometimes I feel like a voice crying in the wilderness.

 

[The system seems to have eaten my reply; apologies if this is a duplicate.]

Thanks for the additional information about these; I guess it will continue to be a mystery until someone finds a huge manufacturer's catalog in their grandparents' effects some day.

Random thought, possibly not new to people that have been following this: any chance there could be patents or copyright filed by the manufacturer for some part of this process?

(Last month I spent some time in the US Patent online files to find more information about a spinning mechanical teakettle from the 1990s, so it's near the top of my mind.)