Cindythings Chrystal Dunninger Museum Page 5

This is the most important piece in the collection. It's three pieces, really. I named these Chrystal's Crystals the moment I set eyes on them. They are costume jewelry, not actual diamonds, unfortunately! Maybe not a girl's best friends but very good friends, anyway.

Have a look at them. Where possible, the photographs on this site are set up so that the items will load onto the website actual size if you have a 12 inch/30cm diameter screen, so you can appreciate how impressive this broach and matching earrings are. In case that doesn't work, the broach is 2 3/4 inches by 2 1/4 inches, or 7 cm by 6 cm, maybe you can adjust your view to see them that size.

Chrystal's Crystals are sparkly, weighty, and very beautiful in person. It is difficult to capture their subtle coloration against any background I have tried, so I'll give you a few. The five largest almond-shaped stones near the large round stone have a faintly smoky tinge I just love, as do the two long, leaf-like stones on the earrings. In the evening by lamplight, the round stones all glimmer distinctly pink, but you can't tell in daylight. These would have been beautiful when Chrystal wore them out at night to some swanky affair. Here is how they appear against black,

This is the box Chrystal kept the set in. The box says "FF." The tiny letters say "sacramento at loehmann's plaza - nevada city, ca." I'm told by Nevada City's Chamber of Commerce that there was a shop called "Fabulous Fakes" in those two locations, both long gone now. The cotton in the box has been worn thin where the pin was taken on and off many times, so I suspect it's the original box the set came in. I wonder if it was purchased by Chrystal while on a visit to her son, who lived in the area, or if maybe it was purchased as a gift for her? Either way, I'm sure she loved them. I do!

The Magic Baskets are another very important piece in this collection. Chrystal wore this item on a necklace often, and would say to people as they lingered enjoyably at a table, "Do you want to see my magic baskets?" And then she would open the lid, take out the three nesting gold tubes inside, and do some sort of magic trick with them. If you slide them one way, all three come apart. If you slide them the other way, they telescope in one long, tapering elliptical cylinder. Maybe that was the trick, but this was a lady with some serious magic training. I suspect she did more with them. If anyone has any idea about what kind of trick she might have done with it, or if you can think of one, would you please let me know? I'd be very interested.

As for the item itself, the gold basket with hinged lid is engraved with flowers that look Hawaiian to me, like plumeria. I wonder if she could have bought them back in the 1920's when she stayed in Hawaii? It's a very yellow gold, it seems like 22 karat gold to me. The bottom is marked with a star followed by H&H. If anyone knows what that means, please let me know. On the back below the lid hinge is a loop, with a link through it to slide onto a chain. The basket is just under an inch / just under 2 1/2 cm tall. It's a really fascinating little object and it is irresistible to sit and play with.

Do you want to see my magic baskets? Here they are. The photos show it actual size. The first row shows it front and back. The 2nd row, opening the lid, looking inside, and taking out the nested tubes. 3rd row, the tubes taken apart. 4th row, the tubes telescoped together. And there you have them, The Magic Baskets.

This is a Faberge scarab wrist watch. The face says Quartz, Faberge, Japan, and Japan movt, and has a pretty little diamond at 12--and now I am legally blind for making that out! I found a lady who owns one just like it, and she said she bought hers in the early 1960's when scarabs were quite popular. The wrist band is gold links with Egyptian scarabs. They are supposed to be lucky, with each stone conveying a particular kind of luck. On most scarab jewelry one color will be repeated twice, supposedly connoting especially strong fortune in that area. In this case, black is the repeated color. I looked up the meanings of the colors, and black is supposed to relate to death, the underworld, and night, which somehow seems appropriate for a girl associated with Dunninger, who smoked Phantom cigarettes and used a bat as a logo. The price was $160.00 in the early 1960's. At that time, a hefty chunk of cash for a wrist watch. I consulted an expert on the price of things in the early 1960's, my mother! According to her, a mortgage on a $13,000 three bedroom, two bath, living-, family-, and dining room house with giant backyard at the time might be $98, and a very nice, excellent quality wrist watch could be had for fifteen or twenty dollars. My mother says this would have been an extremely fine, costly wristwatch, more likely purchased in a jewelers than a typical department store of the time, or at the least a very fine department store such as Neimann-Marcus. She adds that Faberge, the same design company that made those famous eggs, was always considered the finest of designers. I don't believe this is true gold, although it may have been gold plated? I do know Chrystal must have worn it many, many times, because the gilding on the back has worn thin and the silver metal beneath shows through. She must have loved it.