favorite collections: antique tortoiseshell boxes

We have collected antique tortoiseshell boxes for many years. 
I wrote about our antique tortoiseshell frames here.

Tortoiseshell items were popular in the mid-1800's.  The world of travel was just opening up and items made from this exotic material were highly prized by the Victorians.  The Victorians were masters of elevating useful, everyday items to things of beauty.   Boxes and cases were made to hold common items like:  tea, needles, sewing items and thimbles, snuff, calling cards, eye glasses, hair pins, and jewelry.  Thankfully, in 1973 the Endangered Species Act helped to save the tortoise from extinction.  Today, only true antique items (by definition "antique" is anything over 100 years old) can be bought and sold.  Often tortoiseshell items are labeled as "faux" to allow it to be sold on such sites as ebay.  Many of these items are not faux, but as with all "antiques" the buyer needs to be knowledgeable and to know identification signs and markings of the "antique" they are wanting to purchase. "Celluloid" tortoiseshell is also very common and I have seen it labeled as real, when it is in reality a plastic.

Small needle boxes and a larger jewelry box (in this photograph) inside an antique cabinet in the master bedroom.

 

The bookcase in the reading room holds the large majority of our collection.  Because these pieces are generally small they work best when grouped together.  This grouping shares the shelf with an antique alligator box, an antique Chinese blue and white double happiness ginger jar, an antique sepia drawing, and a piece of "brain" coral.

On the right of this shelf is a large etui configured as a sewing kit- it contains small scissors and a thimble and compartments for needles and thread.   A stack of calling card cases holds one of the four needle boxes, and on the left is an eyeglass case that contains the original glasses, still inside.

19th century English sterling handled tortoiseshell page turner.  Page turners were used to turn the delicate pages of antique books. The Victorians knew that the oils and dirt on their hands could damage the paper.  Books were a luxury item and great care was taken to protect them.

My pièce de résistance...  an antique British West Indies tortoiseshell box. 

I placed a small grouping of boxes from our collection together on a copper tray to show you how beautiful they are displayed as a whole! 

Wait.....  what's that in the middle????

That's not an antique tortoiseshell box.... that's my iPhone!!!!  :) :) Truth be told, and try as I might, I couldn't come to love my Otterbox.  Dan loves his, but for all the reasons he loves it I didn't love mine.  When I found this tortoise iPhone case my heart skipped a beat!! 

You can find it on Amazon...here.

Seriously... how gorgeous is that?!  But, I do confess that I was a mere click away from returning it when I first got it... you see, my iPhone is black and this case with a black phone as the background just didn't do it. I was bummed, and then seconds before hitting the "return" button I had the idea to cut a piece of white paper to lighten up the case on my phone! It worked well, but the background was too yellow for my liking- I was trying to match my real tortoiseshell!

I tried several other papers to get to the right background color, and it turned out to be a lowly brown paper bag that proved to be the perfect backdrop to create the look and color of a real tortoiseshell piece!

I love that my iPhone case serves the same purpose of my antique tortoiseshell pieces... just as the Victorians did- it makes an everyday object a thing of beauty!

You can click this link to see  antique tortoiseshell items for sale.

vintage japanese glass fishing floats

basketball-size fishing float in antique urn at front door


(This post could also be entitled "it's a small world," but I'll get to that story later in this post!)

Japanese glass fishing floats were once used by fishermen in many parts of the world to keep their nets afloat. Large groups of fishnets strung together, sometimes 50 miles (80 km) long, were set adrift in the ocean and supported near the surface by hollow glass balls or cylinders containing air to give them buoyancy.  These glass floats are no longer being used by fishermen, but many of them are still afloat in the world's oceans, primarily the Pacific.

The earliest floats, including most Japanese glass fishing floats, were hand made by a glassblower. Recycled glass, especially old sake bottles, was typically used and air bubbles in the glass are a result of the rapid recycling process. After being blown, floats were removed from the blowpipe and sealed with a 'button' of melted glass before being placed in a cooling oven. (This sealing button is sometimes mistakenly identified as a pontil mark. However, no pontil (or punty) was used in the process of blowing glass floats.) While floats were still hot and soft, marks were often embossed on or near the sealing button to identify the float for trademark. These marks sometimes included kanji symbols. Today most of the glass floats remaining in the ocean are stuck in a circular pattern of ocean currents in the North Pacific.   Once a float lands on a beach, it may roll in the surf and become "etched" by sand. Many glass floats show distinctive wear patters from the corrosive forces of sand, sun, and salt water. When old netting breaks off of a float, its pattern often remains on the surface of the glass where the glass was protected under the netting. Other floats have small amounts of water trapped inside of them. This water apparently enters the floats through microscopic imperfections in the glass while the floats are suspended in Arctic ice or held under water by netting.  Most floats are shades of green because that is the color of glass from recycled sake bottles (especially after long exposure to sunlight). However, clear, amber, aquamarine, amethyst, blue and other colors were also produced.

They have become a popular collectors’ item for beachcombers and decorators. Replicas are also being manufactured.

(The above excerpt is from Wikipedia and the full article can be read here.)

Fishing floats on the dining room table.  I love them all, but my very favorites have the rope etching.

photo for the love of a house






A collection of baseball-size floats still in their nets.
Vintage Biltmore Hotel Silver tray.photo for the love of a house



Close-up of the "marking" on the float.

photo for the love of a house

More of the collection in the basement!  This jardiniere is huge, so the size of the floats is a little misleading..... the largest in this photo are basketball-size and the smallest is grapefruit-size!
photo for the love of a house



My own personal exposure to fishing floats came at a very young age...  as I've mentioned before, my mother grew up in Hawaii (the story of her childhood lamp that now resides in my kitchen is here) and she would find floats on the beach that had washed ashore.   When she married my father and moved to the mainland she brought those floats with her and I grew up in San Antonio with the floats scattered in the yard amidst the flowers and shrubs.  After meeting Dan and moving to the Pacific Northwest we began antiquing to furnish our then apartment.  I started spying the small floats at shops, back then for very little money- usually around $1-$3 each!!  The floats captured my heart for three reasons:  I have a fondness for the orb shape (as can be seen throughout the house); they reminded me of home; and being poor newlyweds,  at $1 it was sometimes the only thing I could afford to buy on a shopping trip!   
Thus, a collection began!!

Fast forward several years and many floats - small baseball-size floats, grapefruit-size and large basketball-size floats have now been added to our collection!  We lived in Dallas at this point, and my much;) older sister, Susan, and beloved brother-in-law, Doug, admired our collection and started collecting floats themselves.
We had many wonderful antiquing sources in the Northwest, so for my antiques business in Dallas Dan and I would fly back regularly to shop.  On one such trip we took Susan and Doug with us, and went to the Tacoma Dome Antiques Show.  At the show, we separated to shop and when we met back up with Susan and Doug they were in a booth that had floats for sale talking to a man who was introduced to us as "Frank Forster."  Frank evidently had a vast collection of floats and the next thing I know we are driving to Frank's house in Tacoma to see his collection!  And vast it was- Frank was a serious collector and a whole room had been dedicated to fishing floats!   We also met his lovely wife Kim.  My sister corresponded with Frank and Kim for several years, until Frank's death.

So..... imagine my surprise when several months ago while blog-hopping I stumble on a blog called

Glass Float Junkie 

and on her site find photos and a mention of Frank and Kim's collection!! 

It is definitely a small world, yes?!

Rich Richardson and Frank Forster

photo Glass Float Junkie

Kamichia used to live in Alaska (she now lives on the Oregon coast) and would take plane trips to remote
beaches and find the likes of this....

photo by Glass Float Junkie



I squealed out loud when I first saw this photo!  The mother load of fishing floats right on the beach!!  Like an Easter egg hunt, only better!!!!  Can you imagine?! 

For a fascinating pictorial be sure to click on all of Kamichia's photo-links on her sidebar here showing her beach combing trips and the individual photos of different types of floats!

Since floats are now considered "collectibles", there are a lot of fakes out there too.  Kamichia talks about how to tell what is real from what is fake here.

Several of you have asked me where you might find fishing floats for sale; Kamichia also sells fishing floats on etsy,  (you can also look on ebay), but-  be forewarned.....
fishing floats can quickly become an obsession!!!:)

Here are a few other photos of how I use the vintage fishing floats around the house...
placed in the center of the iron dining table on the back porch

...in a copper tub filled with fishing floats and copper floats on the back porch

... in an old wire basket on the upstairs master bedroom porch.  I love the pop of color of the one amethyst float!