Featured Victorian Brass Counter Bell

My latest purchase. Dunno how old it is exactly, but I reckon Victorian. It's certainly of a similar style to other bells from the Victorian era that I've seen.

 

For a service desk, to call the staff out from the back room? Just speculation. It is pretty.

 

or fancy hotel , to call the porter..

 

Counter bell, desk-bell, service-bell, call-bell.

Bells like this were common in places like shops, hotels, front desks of public buildings like libraries or theatres or similar such establishments. The grander or more elaborate the bell was, chances are the more elaborate or grand a building it served. What attracted me to this bell was just how elaborate and beautiful the base is, with the flowers and leaves.

You rang this bell to call the bellhop. Or to call for service. Or assistance. Or to notify the next person in line, etc etc. Back in the days when real customer service meant something, unlike some places today...

 

NICE bell!!!!!

 

Haha!! You flatter me, Aquitane. I didn't expect this much interest or praise over a bell!! But yes, I do think that it is very nice. It will now form part of my collection.



Here are my other four bells.

 

Nicely positioned so your relatives in the background can summon you anytime they need refreshments.

 

Refreshments are already there - there is a marvelous brass tiffin carrier next to it...........................

 

So there is. I think that is the one Shangas posted a while ago. But they will need something to drink with their food.

 

Haha!! The relatives in the background are my great-grandmother, my grandmother, my great-aunts and great-uncle.

Here's the full picture:


Great granny's front and center. Grandma's 2nd on the right. Any Jewelry may recognise that some of the women are still dressed in traditional Straits Chinese nyonya kebaya outfits with belts, slippers and kerongsang.

Also here's the tiffin carrier:



Next to it is my brass spice-grinder. And in front is a traditional, wooden ang ku kueh mould. For making these things:



Ang Ku Kueh. Literally 'Red Tortoise Cakes'. Because they're small, and red, and look like tortoise-shells

 

Your video on the tiffin carrier was awesome!

 

It must be nice to have a sense of lineage ...

 

Oh thank you!! I do mean to make more videos, but I haven't had the time recently...

If you want to talk about lineage, here's more...


This is four generations of our family. Second row, 4th from the left is my great-great-grandmother. Next to her is my great-grandmother. Next to her is my grandmother. Next to her is my great-aunt. Sitting in front of my grandmother is my dad.

Up the back on the left is my grandfather. Behind my great-grandmother is my great-uncle Jackie (gran's little brother). Down the front are all my aunts and uncles.

 

Oh my goodness, Shangas, what a wonderful photo to have as part of your family history. Thank you so much for posting it.

I was drawn to the smiling face of your great-great-grandmother even before you identified her. ("Second row, 4th from the left is my great-great-grandmother.")

 

We were visiting my uncle's house in Malaysia and the original of that photograph was hanging on the wall. And my dad almost ripped it off and he goes:

"PHOTOGRAPH THIS. NOW. You will NEVER find another one like it!"

"W-what is it?"

"THIS...is grandma...Grandpa...that's me...that's your Uncle Lawrence, Your Uncle John, Uncle Charles, Aunty Felicia, Aunty Molly, Uncle Henry, this is your great-grandma, your great-GREAT-grandma, your great-uncle..."

He went on, and on, and on, and on, pointing out almost everybody in the photo.

 

Shangas, you have described your father's reaction to the photo so well that I can "almost" hear him encouraging you to get the photographing of that photograph done.

 

Very nice, I've always wanted one of these, love the casting, class

 

Yes, wonderful! And Peranakan slippers aren't just any old slippers, but minutely beaded:


These would have been worn with a 'buketan sarong-kebaya', a Dutch design with bunches of flowers, worn by Dutch colonial, Peranakan and Dutch Indonesian ladies:

I think I said it before in another thread, the Nyonya Kebaya style was inspired by Dutch colonial ladies, who adopted and adapted Javanese dress in the tropics.
Many Javanese fabric designs were restricted to certain social groups, so Dutch women made their own designs, in order not to offend anyone. Those were worn by Peranakan women as well.
I have no idea how this lady still managed to look so extremely European in her sarong-kebaya:

The dress was even taken to The Netherlands, here is a 50s photo in a very Dutch street:

A detail of my buketan kain, on top is part of a matching 1930s kebaya, both with flowers. A kain is a wrap-around skirt made of a flat piece of fabric, a sarong is tube shaped skirt, kebaya is the Javanese style shirt:

 

Yep, quite correct.

Peranakan slippers are very difficult to bead, though. You're sewing together hundreds, thousands of tiny, tiny, TINY glass beads, like sewing together the pixels on a computer-screen. I was watching a documentary-short on the Peranakan and they interviewed a nyonya who made a living doing beadwork. And they said: "How long does it take to do a pair of slippers?"

Her reply? Anywhere from 2-3 weeks, to 2-3 MONTHS, depending on the design and the level of intricacy.

This is why a lot of Peranakan culture is starting to die out - it's just so intricate that most people these days don't have the patience to do it anymore. It's a real shame...

 

Hey Raver. Yeah they can be tricky to find. This is the nicest one of this style that I've seen in recent years. The first one I purchased walked into the local thrift-shop where I used to volunteer. It sat on the manager's bookcase in his office and he kept saying he was going to put it out the front for customers to use, but he never got around to it.

It sat there for something like 18 months, until I couldn't stand it anymore and asked if I could buy it. He accepted $5.00 as full payment, and I took it! I found out later that it was from the 1870s or 80s, which would be roughly the same date for this bell, too.