Antique Glass Wave Crest CF Monroe Trinket Jewelry Box

Antique Hand Painted Wave Crest Dresser Box with Helmschmied swirl and floral design. Dimensions:  4.5" x 3" Excellent antique condition
Transcription:

Hi this is Jennifer here with City Farmhouse Antiques and I am here with the find of the week.  This week I want to talk to you about opalware.  A lot of opalware was made into Victorian style jewelry and dresser boxes like these you see here. They were really at the height of their popularity from 1890 to 1910 so these are really old pieces. The CF Monroe Company was one of the largest producers of this type of glass.  They didn’t actually make the glass.  When they started their business back in 1880 in Connecticut they actually purchased blanks from France, Mt. Washington Pairpoint, as well as other glass houses and then they hired the artists to hand paint each piece.  You can see that these pieces are really detailed and intricate and they were all hand painted.  Some pieces will be marked and some will not. CF Monroe really felt that his glass stood on its own merit without a makers mark to identify it.  You can see this is a biscuit jar that was done in the egg crate pattern.  It is in the shape of an egg crate and it would have been used to hold biscuits, cookies, crackers, and those types of things.  This one doesn’t have a makers mark on the bottom.  This one is like a little trinket box and you can see that it has a seashell design on the top.  Let me see if I can get in a little closer.  You can see that it is all hand painted with little flowers.  This one is marked on the bottom.  Let’s see if I can show you the logo so you can see what it looks like.  I can show you on another one better.  This is a previous tag.  You can see this piece was worth quite a bit of money.  It dates back to the late 1800’s early 1900’s and has the original lining in it which is neat, but they just aren’t worth what they used to be unfortunately.  Here you can see the lining that is all original.  People use them for a lot of different things.  You can put jewelry in them, a rosary is in this one.  This is all original lining that is in pretty good condition on this piece that is very old.  This is my favorite piece.  This is the collars and cuffs piece. I am going to do a separate video next just on that piece and what they were used for.  This is another little trinket box that has the helmschmied swirl on top.  I probably didn’t pronounce that right.  Here on this one you can see the logo a little bit better. There you can see that Wave crest logo.  This piece back there is actually alabaster so it is a different piece, it isn’t glass, but I included it in the video because I love the ornate feet on this piece.  Of course the inside of this is a little more worn but that looks like all original lining as well.  These pieces can be used as dresser boxes and all kinds of things.  Like I said Monroe really didn’t mark all his pieces because he felt like the quality stood on its own.  He made three different types known as Kelva, Nakara, and Wave crest.  These of course are all Wave crest.  I don’t have a piece in the other styles to show you because they have sold already.  I think several of these are listed on the website now.  Check us out on our website at www.cityfarmhouseantiques.com and come like us on Facebook.