An Exquisite brooch and a fab blog

Exquisite by manufacturer, enormous by nature.

For once I'm managing to stick to a New Year's resolution. The gym has been more or less abandoned (although spraining my ankle helped with that one) and the only time I spent more than a week without drinking was when I was on antibiotics, but BUY MORE BROOCHES continues.

I found this one in a local charity shop, British Heart Foundation. Of all the ones in my town, it's probably the quirkiest, because it's small and dark yet it's also the place where I'm most likely to turn up something interesting and vintage. I spotted this in the display case and the size of it, about three inches across, caught my eye immediately. There are some chips on the rightmost acorn and the leaf next to it, but the whole thing is so big and colourful and sparkly that you only really notice those when you get right up to it and look.

My usual method for dating things is to take a stab at the date of the item, then do a Google image search and see if I can find similar items to confirm the rough date. I really had no idea with this one, and it's unsigned, but luckily I found a picture of a brooch exactly like this one. There's a British-based website called Jewels and Finery that sells vintage costume jewellery, including some from the same series as my brooch, and the lady who runs it also has an excellent and informative costume jewellery blog. My monster brooch was made in Solihull by Exquisite and dates from the 1960s! Not bad for £1.50, eh?