The Stained Glass Butterfly

This is a very special brooch, a delicate piece of metalwork and stained glass.  The butterfly's head and body are made of glass beads, and the legs and antennae of wire.  It's not easy to capture how beautifully the tiny glass panes capture the light.  My husband gave this to me as an anniversary present.  I'm sure he got it at the Fred Jones Art Museum gift shop (the one I recommended!).  He wasn't able to keep from telling me that "it cost a lot of money."  (NB:  This is why I was right to marry him instead of the one who re-gifted a brooch he'd picked up in Japan.)

This brooch is both big and delicate, so I wear it when I don't think I'll be smashing into things or having to wear a coat on top of it.  One of my favorite ways to wear it is on this Ralph Lauren velvet jacket, in an Edwardian style.

The Llama

Another of my many animal pins.  This one is a llama, made of cast pewter.  It has a nice piece of carnelian set into it to depict a blanket.  The pewter is literally cast with the gemstone embedded in it.  It is from Peru, but the artist is unknown.  Like many of my pins and brooches, I got it at a museum store -- the Fred Jones Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma.  (Check this one out:  they get good stuff in all the time.)  One reason I like this pin is because I visited Peru many years ago and had brought back several different llama items -- the locals know that tourists are mad for llamas.  I like the profound simplicity of the design, especially its right angles.

This pin is easy to wear, demure and the right size for many outfits.  Here it is on a little turquoise short-sleeved cardigan.

The Art Nouveau Brooch

This lovely piece, if not actually from the 1920s, is several decades old and part of some deceased woman's estate.  It is cast brass with copen blue and green cloisonne inserts, interspersed with a number of small blue-green tourmalines around the edge, with a single one in the center, surrounded by rhinestones.  I got this at A Haggle of Vendors (now THERE'S a name for a resale store!), in Grand Junction, Colorado.  My sister, who loves unearthing a forgotten treasure, frequents the place, if not actually haunting it.  (She says, "I sometimes watch Hoarders to keep myself grounded.")  I like this brooch for its departure from my animal bent (in brooches, not behavior).

This brooch is actually quite versatile, since it is such an iconic example of what we think of when we pronounce the word `brooch'.   I have it here on a Ralph Lauren blazer.