Simply Thimbles

Hi all, According to the back of the thimble these two comic characters are Arthur Stanley Jefferson and Oliver Norvell Hardy.  Better known to millions as Laurel and Hardy or even more simply as Stan and Ollie. I have some fond childhood memories of watching re-runs of Laurel and Hardy on the TV with my family.  They had an innocent comical magic that could appeal to all ages. Slapstick at its very best. Oliver is probably the most famous Ollie that I know of and is one of the reasons why I am called Olly.  When I first started school, my friends caught on to the fact that my proper name, Olwen, is very similar to Oliver.  It didn't take long for everyone to start calling me Olly and it stuck. Now there are a few things about Stan and Ollie that I didn't know until I bought this thimble.  The first one is that Stan's surname was Jefferson, Laurel was just his stage name. The second is th...

Hi there, I'm finally starting to get settled again after moving for the second time in 6 months!  I've picked up a few thimbles over the last few weeks, all of which went straight into a box and I've only just had the chance to take a good look at them and to take photos of them. This first one is a Morris Minor, also known as a "Moggie". The Moggie was designed by Alex Issigonis and went on sale for the first time back in 1948.  Alex Issigonis also developed my favourite car, the Mini in 1959. I'm not sure why the Morris Minor got the nickname of moggie but it was so popular that in 1961 it became the first British car to reach 1,000,000.  This milestone was celebrated by the production of a limited number of Lilac moggies. What a cool colour for a car. I think that's really sweet. Sticking with the Moggies theme, this thimble is also really sweet. As long as you are not the little chick... Bye for now Olly

I found this thimble at a local car boot sale for 50p. Well, technically it was T who spotted it first. He pointed it out to me as he thought it looked wierd. It’s made from metal, possibly brass, and has a small round hole at the top. It's a peephole thimble, otherwise known as a Stanhope thimble. It has an inbuilt lens for viewing micro pictures. You put the top of the thimble up to your eye, tilt towards the light and you can view the little tiny picture inside. The pictures inside could be of famous people, historic events, seaside resorts. Some could even have been a touch risqué. Basically, they are souvenirs or novelties. Unfortunately, the picture in this one has been lost so I can only guess at what it might have been. The name Stanhope refers to the lens on the inside and is named after the 3rd Earl of Stanhope who is generally accepted as being the inventor of this style of lens. He didn’t invent it for looking at micro pictures in souvenirs though. He d...

We have an exchange student from Japan staying with us at the moment and one of the things that she wanted to see whilst here in Cornwall was the Minack theatre.  It's an open air theatre perched on the side of a cliff just a little way up the coast from Lands End near a little village called Porthcurno. T, Eldest, Youngest and I have never been to the Minack Theatre so we thought this would be a prime opportunity to put that right. We went to see Madam Butterfly. A very sad tale of betrayal and lost love.  Now, the play itself was pretty good.  I couldn't understand all the singing.  It was a bit high pitched and the sound kept dropping out if the actors moved away from centre stage, but that didn't really matter as you can pick up the general idea of what is going on by just watching. I can't really say that I was impressed by The Minack Theatre though.  There are signs as you enter the Th...

Hi all, I find pewter amazing.  It's such a workable material, made up from 90% tin mixed with copper and a few other things that I have never heard of such as Antimony and Bismuth. I had to look those last two up on Google.  Apparently they are chemical elements. Pewter has been around for a long time. Mostly famous for making utensils, tankards and plates, its pliable nature lends itself to souvenirs, models, curios and thimbles.  The designs on many Pewter items can be really detailed. Like this narrowboat... otherwise known as a canal boat or barge. An invaluable mode of transport in the Industrial Revolution. Or this dragon... with its pointed sharp claws and long tail that spans the whole diameter of the thimble. Or these swans... their majestic grace just radiates as they swim effortlessly around the base. It's no wonder that some of my favourite thimbles are Pewter . Bye for now Olly Facebook.com/olwenwhite/ ...

"I saw a Mouse. Where? There on the stair. Where on the stair? Right there! A little Mouse with cloggs on. Well I declare! Going clipp clippity clop on the stair." The words above are from the song "Windmill in Old Amsterdam" sung by Ronnie Hilton back in the 1960's.  Now, I don't remember him singing it - no, really - I'm not that old!  But, I do remember singing the song in music lessons at school.    There's something about a traditional style windmill that just conjours up peace, tranquility and a little bit of good old romantic nostalgia of childhood and the lazy, hazy days of summers long gone.  I found this pewtar windmill on Ebay for 99p.  I seem to be getting a lot of thimbles for 99p just lately!  I thought it was just adorable so had to go for it.  I just love the way the little sails turn round. It's so sweet. Anyway, like the rest of the pewtar thimbles I have, this one is purely...

Have I mentioned that I love a bargain?  Well, I was browsing in one of our local second-hand shops when I came across a bargain that I just couldn't pass by.  Twenty Dollars for 99p. What a brilliant exchange rate.  Te He.  Bye for now Olly Facebook.com/olwenwhite/ instagram.com/olwenwhitewrites/ Twitter @OlwenWhite

A friend of mine recently returned from a trip to Scotland and gave me this thimble.  I've never been to Scotland and this thimble has given me another place to add to my "what to visit in Scotland one day list".     Although I have heard of Glencoe, I thought it was a skiing resort.  Well, it is but there is a lot more to it than that.  It is situated on the west side of Scotland, overlooking Loch Leven.  Fort William and Ben Nevis are to the North and Oban to the South. It's stunning scenery has led to it being used as the backdrop in a few movies - "The Highlander" "Rob Roy" and more recently the "Harry Potter" series.    This thimble, also from Scotland, came in a bulk purchase of thimbles from Ebay a couple of years ago. Old Leanach Cottage is on Culloden Moor which is near Inverness. Culloden is the location of a very famous battle from the Jacobite uprising. ...

If there is one thing that I like better than buying a thimble, it's finding out more about it. Where it was made, what it was made from, has it got signs of use.  The history behind every thimble is just fascinating. A few weeks ago I was contacted by a lady who was keen to find out about a thimble that she had inherited. The thimble had been passed down through the female line for at least three generations. There wasn't too much to go on, but using the little bits that she had sent through and my trusty research tool, the internet, I was able to track down the thimble's origins. The thimble was from Taxco in Mexico and very similar to the one shown here.  Now, up until that point I hadn't heard of Taxco so researching the information for her was an absolute joy. It opened up a whole new world of thimbles that I didn't know existed. Back in the 1920s an American called William Spratling moved to Taxco de Alarcon in Mexico.  He found out that the area had...

  There have been lots of different ways of advertising products or services over the years.  These days the most powerful methods are probably the television and the internet. Both tend to get taken for granted and its hard for us living in a technology driven world to imagine what life was like before the internet or even the good old Telly. The first electronically transmitted television pictures were sent in 1926 but it wasn't until much later, probably the 1950s/1960s when most households would be able to get a TV.  The world wide web has only been in public use since the 1990s.  Now advertising has been around a lot longer than that, so what did people use? Newspapers?  Radio?  Well, why not pop your product on a thimble? This thimble is brass and has the wording "Use Hudson's Soaps" right around the base.  The vertical lines surrounding the wording, could indicate that this was possibly made by Charles Il...