Saturday, September 10, 2011

Dating Antique Glass Buckles from Vintage Czechoslovakia


I have mentioned elsewhere how much I appreciate the intersection of history, art and artisan craftsmanship that is exemplified by vintage beads and components.  I do enjoy discovering as much as I can about the history of our vintage supplies. These particular vintage, actually antique, glass buckles took me on a journey to Eastern Europe, to Czechoslovakia and Bohemia over 90 years ago.
These buckles are marked M. C. S. R.  The “M” is larger than the “CSR”.  Hard to see, and to photograph, but it's there.
A bit of time spent researching the history of Czechoslovakia, specifically the many names this region of the world has held over time, and I learned that from 1920 – 1938 Czechoslovakia’s formal name was Czechoslovak Republic, with the acronym CSR.  Bingo! Perhaps the “M” stands for “manufactured”. It is distinctly not part of the acronym “CSR” because it was specifically made to be larger than those letters.
We have these buckles listed as being from the 1930’s, but in fact they may be as old as 1920. In general, we like to be conservative in our estimates when we date our vintage supplies.  So in many cases, such as these buckles, the age of a particular bead, button or cabochon may be older than the date we provide.  The Bumbershoot Supplies website, www.bumbershootsupplies.com, is a good resource, because information there is formatted to provide you with the date and place of origin of each supply, as well as links to these types of history blog posts for individual items, as these posts are written. 
If you ever have questions about any of our supplies, certainly feel free to email me, Sharon at sjdurfy@bumbershootsupplies.com and  I’ll do my best to provide any information we may have.

Products related to this history can be found right here at Bumbershoot Supplies.

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