MIRROR-MIRROR IN MY PURSE: The Story of Vintage & Collectible Compacts By marks4antiques.com
As the corseted and crinoline Victorian era gave way to the age of the flapper, the changing status of women revealed itself in curious ways. Among them was the unspoken right of liberated ladies to smoke and to powder their noses in public. Out would come the powder compact - often enameled, sometimes even bejeweled - from the beaded, velvet or silver-mesh bag. In its myriad shapes, materials and designs, the compact was more than a fashionable accessory, more, even, than "the Matching pair of Purse and Compact in Silver & Gold weapon of a fantastic coquetry," with Crystal accents, both signed Judith Leiber as Vogue magazine put it in a 1923 issue. It was often an object of impeccable period beauty, and that period, more often than not, was Art Deco. Today these little relics of social history are being snapped up in increasing numbers at flea markets, antiques shops and shows, and auction houses by a host of collectors, most of them women, who enjoy both their looks and their affordability. While the most lavish compacts - those made by such jewelers as Boucheron, Carrier and Tiffany sell for hundreds or even thousands of dollars, the mass-produced compacts of the type used by most women from the 1920s right through the 1950s sell for much less. Many cost under $100 in smart shops. Others can literally be picked up for pennies, if one knows where to look: one collector bought a trio of never-used enameled compacts at a house sale for fifty cents each. Early ancestors to the powder compact were the oriental ointment jar and the Egyptian kohl container, makeup of many kinds having always been a part of the aeons-long quest for self-improvement and beauty. Powder itself is one of the oldest known cosmetics. In ancient Rome women rubbed on chalk to whiten their faces, and even before then small cakes of white lead were used. The most