Small silver plated champagne cooler as a ladies donation from the company "ARGENTOR", vintage from Austria

If you are interested in Austrian history, your heart will beat faster. Here you can see a miniature champagne cooler from the famous metal goods manufacturer "Argentor-Werke Rust & Hetzel". This champagne cooler was given to the female visitors as a donation to the "Anniversary Ball of the Geneva Women's Association" in 1927

It is a beautiful decorative piece for your home and should be given pride of place. This champagne cooler is also a valuable gift for collectors of old, history-laden metal objects.

The "Anniversary Ball of the Geneva Women's Association" took place in January 1927 in the Hotel Maria Theresia in Innsbruck. It is a tradition in Austria that the big ball season takes place every year between November 11th and Ash Wednesday. And it is customary for the organizer of a dance ball to give a gift to the ladies when they enter the ballroom.

In the earliest times, a ball donation was often designed as an artistic little book (carnet de bal). On the first pages mostly the dance sequence was printed and humorous articles. Then followed blank pages for the dance entries. A pencil inserted into the tab was provided for this purpose. The archetype of the ball donation was the dance ticket. Later, fans, jugs, vases, drinking vessels, plaques, statuettes, miniatures of buildings and musical instruments or mirrors were also presented as ball donations.

When our small champagne cooler was handed over in 1927, this old tradition of donating books to women was long gone, since women no longer went to the ball alone, but with a male companion.

When this women's donation was handed over in January 1927, no one knew what difficult years Austria was facing. Only 6 months later the July revolt broke out in Vienna (fire in the Vienna Palace of Justice), which claimed 84 lives. And 2 years later -1929 - the big stock market crash came. And as early as 1934, Austria was engulfed in civil war. After that, it was only 5 years before Austria went into World War II alongside Germany.

Our small women's donation is in very good condition. Only the metal has darkened a bit over the years.

Material: silver plated metal
Height: 5 cm
Diameter: 4.5 cm
Production time: 1927