All my baskets

It was in the late 1970s when Gabriella Mariotti, on ‘a cold November morning’, as she recalls in the first pages of the book, discovered among the stalls of a New York market some unique artefacts that were to become the subject of one of her most important collections. These objects were the so-called ‘American brooches’, baskets of flowers that were produced by a few family groups from the 1920s to the 1940s. These small objects are creations coming from the ‘imagination’ of the craftsman, colourful and flashy, intended as an imitation of real flowers and made using iron, minor alloys or silver. They became so famous that they were also used in cinema, hence their costume jewellery denomination: it was Coco Chanel who first gave this definition with her famous quote ‘Je fais de bijoux pour meus costumes’, ‘I make jewellery for my clothes’. Despite the difficulties in sourcing historiographical information, Gabriella Mariotti presents us these vivid objects by tracing the history of some of the most famous fantasy jewellery manufacturers. The book includes photographs of brooches from her extensive collection and the author’s suggestions for those who would like to start buying these jewels.