Rare Vintage Rex Fifth Avenue Mesh Powder Compact – Guilloché Pansy Floral Design – Made in USA

A particularly unusual vintage Rex Fifth Avenue powder compact, featuring a beautiful floral decorative lid and distinctive flexible gold-tone metal mesh body.

The square lid has a finely patterned pale ground decorated with a beautifully detailed pansy in shades of purple, yellow and green, surrounded by an ornate gold-tone border. The sides and entire reverse of the compact are covered in an exceptionally fine articulated metal mesh, giving the case a wonderfully tactile, almost fabric-like quality.

Rex Fifth Avenue is known for its decorative American powder compacts, including floral and guilloché designs, but surviving examples with this deep metal mesh construction are considerably less commonly encountered than the firm’s conventional rigid cases.

The compact opens to reveal a full-size mirror and loose powder compartment, retaining its original mesh sifter and wonderfully deep peach velvet powder puff. This distinctive style of thick velvet puff is seen in surviving Rex Fifth Avenue compacts; the original ribbon which would have crossed the puff is no longer present.

The case is stamped MADE IN U.S.A. beneath the mirror.

Measures 6cm x 6cm

The compact remains in lovely vintage condition with age-related surface wear, patination and discolouration to the gold-tone metal and mesh. The decorative pansy panel remains particularly attractive, retaining excellent colour and detail. The mirror shows some age-related marking as photographed.

A fabulous and much less commonly encountered mesh-bodied Rex Fifth Avenue compact, combining beautiful floral decoration with an unusual and wonderfully engineered construction. A particularly interesting example for a collector of American vintage compacts, guilloché vanity pieces or Rex Fifth Avenue designs.