Featured How to best DESCRIBE this Mexican Sterling (Bib?) Necklace

A number of MC pieces in eBay Completed listings. None identify maker.

Debora

 

Beautiful necklace! I can't offer much help, but I have seen these described as fringe bib.

 

Hell, even I don't know what I'm talking about half the time, so heaven help the rest of yez.

 

Ah, I like that! I think I'll use it.

 

Yes, I have that book. It's a great resource, but Mexican silversmith IDs are very limited due to no registration records.

 

Correct.
It is only specific to certain cultures or periods when in combination with other techniques or design details. In your case it looks like it was made by a jewellery crafter, not a silversmith.
That doesn't make it any less attractive though, it is just another way of making things, and often a different market too.

Same here. And together we 'kletsen een eind in de lucht', literally 'chatter an end in the air'. (Today's Dutch, especially for you. )

True. There are tax registers, but those are more recent, and not available to non-official sources or researchers.

 

I thought of you yesterday, aj. Susan Calman does a nice show on cruising and the latest was the Netherlands. King's Day!

Everyone, of course, spoke fluent very colloquial English.

 

Thanks again, Any! After I posted the images I saw the difference with the Mexican one. Although similar looking overall.
I have quite a few local craft pieces and many of them are on a similar type of "chain" or "cord" (or suspension?? not sure of the term) - thin leather band or braided thread. These were quite popular here in the 1970s and 1980s, when gold and precious stone jewelry was not sold freely in the shops (only on the black market). They were crafted by licensed craftspeople (only registered members of the Union of Artists were allowed to make and sell) and costed quite a bit because they were regarded as pieces of applied art. Now many are being thrown away by the descendants as not worthy, and can be bought very cheap at flee markets.
Thank you for the tip, to be honest, if I ever go selling, I prefer to deal with craft and costume items under the radar of the scammers.

 

@bosko69 can tell you all about his King's Day experiences, he loved it.

 

Cord is fine.

They were also popular here in those days. Here they were made locally and the makers would sell them at craft fairs, or on the streets.

If you ever sell those craft necklaces abroad as well, be sure to add the style term 'Boho'. In some parts of Europe they use the term 'Ibiza style', which is roughly the same as Boho.
So it is good to add both Boho and Ibiza style. And hand made, of course.

 

Thank you so much, Any, for all the tips and terminology you provided! I do appreciate it, and will remember your advice for sure.

Turns out some things were common in both worlds. The difference is, I guess, that in our world these crafts people were approved by the communist government and institutionalised through the membership in the central body, thus administratively limiting their number and increasing the prices of their products which gave them the opportunity for good earning, more than the average. It was a big deal to be accepted in the National Academy of Arts, very high competition, as it was the only road to the membership in the Union of Artists and thus to good earnings from crafts for those who made jewelry, pottery, leather items, wall carpets (or tapestry??) etc. Deficit and lack of competition leading to high prices (for the local standard of living); they sold at prices of precious metal jewelry abroad (low to mid end, not Cartier or Tiffany). Higher league were the artists who made busts and portraits of communist leaders and ideologically "right" paintings and murals, they were on the top of the society by income, comparable with the nomenclature. All these had hard times after the change.

 

In a way it is good to have quality control. But not if everything is overly controlled, like in the Communist era. That is when surpression starts.

Tapestry is more correct.
In Dutch we call it 'wandtapijt' which translates as wall carpet, like you said. So maybe there is some resemblance between Dutch and Bulgarian.

I hope those artist's talents and skills gave them a good enough income in the end.

 

It may sound ridiculous but a craft leather coat, patch work made of lambs skin pieces, costed almost the price of a one bedroom apartment - for price comparison.

 

The problem is that it had little to do with quality, it was all about ideological correctness. There were talented and not so talented artists but the most cherished were the ones who strictly followed the cannon. The artists engaged in the crafts like jewelry and leather items were actually among the least ideologically pressed so they did make some good stuff.

It seems so

Actually not. Very few of them managed to adjust to the new economic and political reality. You know, animals raised in captivity are seldom able to survive in the wild.

 

Of course, that is how a totalitarian state works. I was thinking of things like the Russian state shops in the West, which sold good quality items. But no doubt that was the state selection for the West, to create a good impression.

True. The system gave them structure, a steady income, and protection of sorts. Freedom doesn't give you that, you need to find your own structure, based on self-discipline, and find your own income, based on talent, hard work, and a good measure of luck. In a way, you need to become like a different person.

 

These were totally different things, the stuff sold in the West and that in the Comecon system. Not only to create good impression, even more important was to sell. They had to provide good quality items in order to be able to sell in the West where there was fierce competition on the contrary of the domestic and Comecon markets. They might have been state-own but not charity, they needed to sell as much as possible because it was a source of hard currency.

Exactly

 

I don't know if they sold much, but it was all welcome of course.
I always thought of those stores as a form of propaganda, to create goodwill. That goodwill was needed to attract tourists, who probably brought in more hard currency than the shops did.
And later on, after perestroyka, the goodwill attracted Western businesses and investors.

 

Sure, both were valid. Propaganda was as important as hard currency
The bottomline is that the goods HAD to be of good quality - for both reasons. Which by no means was the case domestically or in Comecon, in the conditions of total deficit these markets (although in the sense of the Western political economy, they were not markets) absorbed everything, even the poorest quality. And still the deficit remained. There were numerous apocrypha stories and folk jokes devoted to this specific feature of the communist economy - poor quality of goods.

 

Yes, that is what they were known for in the West as well.
Also the irregular supply of groceries, often in senseless quantities, too little or nothing. Or too much of one type, with it all going to waste on the shelf, or people making preserves at home (if they were able to afford that much food).

 

I have a 1970s souvenir tourist cookbook from the USSR. Real Russians at the time didn't cook what's in the book; it's what they would have cooked if the planned economy were planned a lot better than the Communist party did it.(rolleyes)