This unusual pendant, suspended from several vintage brass chains, is an antique belt buckle with the buckle teeth and bar removed. In place of the bar, I engineered a wire holding a fabulous antique black glass star and brass button. The necklace went through several false starts until I felt it was balanced, comfortable and pleasing to the eye.
The chain is 15.5 inches (31-inch circumference). The buckle and button are 3.5 inches. The chain and button dangle at the back of the neck are 4.25 inches.
I scour garage sales, auctions, stores and my life for antique and vintage components that I use in creating one-of-a-kind pieces.
COMPONENTS
- fancy antique cut steel and gold vermeil (?) belt buckle
- 4 superb antique metal buttons
- Art Nouveau square chain from Hayward tie clip
- 3 other kinds of brass chain
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"Invention" —Barbara Hamby
I am personally indebted to antiquity because if it were left
to me nothing would have been invented. We would still be chasing
boars and clubbing them to death. No, that's too refined.
We'd still be eating grass and grubbing for worms.
How did they think up all that stuff? I'm not talking
about painting or literature. That's easy.
What could be more natural than sitting around a campfire
telling stories and then rhyming to make them easier to remember
or having two or three people take different parts?
Voila, poetry and theatre. I'm talking about bread.
Who thought of grinding wheat and mixing it with mold?
Forget bread. I can't get past wheat. Wheat must have been a weed
once. Who walked up to wheat and thought about growing
a whole field of it, picking it, smashing it together,
adding water, throwing it on a fire? Who were these
proto-chemists, these Neanderthal Marie and Pierre Curies
who harvested the grain? To leap from throwing rocks at birds
and grilling them on a spit to Safeway is too great for me,
which leads to another subject if one picks up reading material
in supermarkets. Recently I discovered that alien civilizations
do not vacation on Earth anymore because we are too bellicose
and vulgar. Well, whose fault is it anyway? Anyone who thinks
that buffoons such as we could have thought up wheat,
not to mention architecture, axels, armor, artillery
is not taking his Lithium. There would still be about 250 of us
in caves somewhere in France if someone with big silver eyes
hadn't been buzzing around the universe, bored, sentimental,
and decided to stop and help us along. Next thing you know
there's agriculture, horticulture, apiculture. It's the only
logical explanation and if it weren't for the CIA,
everyone would agree with me. However, scientists in Russia,
Argentina, and the north of England (top-notch men,
every one of them) theorize that not only did the Andromedans
show us a few tricks, they also mated with the indigenous
species. Yuck, you might say, if they think we're creepy now,
just imagine what our manners were like ten or twenty thousand
years ago, though come to think of it, I doubt the alien haute
bourgeoisie was patrolling the outer reaches of the universe.
According to a test devised by these scientists, you can tell
if you are descended from extraterrestrials by certain physical
characteristics, such as blond hair, slender fingers,
musical ability (especially singing), big eyes, blue eyes,
which all point to a racially pure colony in Sweden
or Schleswig-Holstein for a few thousand years
and are somewhat reminiscent of our recent troubles in Europe
and Japan. I, for one, would like to toast an inventor:
Tchin, tchin, Dom Perignon, who said when he discovered
champagne, "My God, I am drinking the stars."
YOU CAN BUY MY STUFF ON ETSY
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