May 2, 2012

Friday Finds: Bride's Basket

A huge hello to all who are a part of Design Enthusiast. Bad health kept me from theblogland...I am back and hope to be better soon. Having said that, I wanted to share a beautiful find from my trips to thrift and antique stores. A very delicate piece of beauty! Called the Bride's Basket


As usual, it was difficult for me to research for information with out knowing where to start :). Most of the time my posts start with a picture or a glimpse of the object/furniture piece at a store. I come back home and struggle with the research...The moment I find something, all the effort feels worth the find :). This week's find is a small glass/crystal and silver basket. Though I get to see them regularly in antique and thrift stores, I did not know much about them. Extensive browsing and reading later I found these were called Bride's basket.


"Bride’s basket was originally called a berry dish / fruit baskets/ fruit bowl. The term “bride’s basket” evolved because a fruit or berry bowl with stand was a very popular gift for the bride-to-be in the 19th century.
During the 1880s, fancier glass inserts began to appear, and the styles available were numerous by the 1890s. American silver and silverplate manufacturers used glass inserts produced in both the United States and Europe. The makers they originated from were not meticulously documented by the silver manufacturers as they were more concerned with their silver stands." Silvercollectblog

liveauctioneers
** Using images from the internet with due credits. These stores I go to have a no camera policy.


Wedding cermonies also include a similar looking piece called a cake basket. The difference between the two being, cake baskets have hinged handles and are movable whereas the bride’s basket handle is stationary. Cake baskets are made of plain metal or just crystal...and did not have glass inserts.




Trivia:
These beautiful pieces were intially called berry dishes..An expert on an antique show on TV mentioned that they were used to serve the bride some berries before the ceremony..hence the name! sweet isn't it! :)

2 comments:

  1. Welcome back. Fascinating post Sudha. Thanks for sharing!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good to have you back in action!! Very interesting and informative post. Such a lovely find.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for your comment. You made my day!

adding pinterest script 3. Changing the Position of the Pin it! button The cool thing about this code is that you have some freedom over where the Pinterest button for Blogger will go over the image. Take a look at the code that you just copied and pasted into the HTML for the word 'center'.