In the Travel section of yesterday’s Guardian a number of writers described treasured souvenirs brought back from their times abroad.  That, and the fact that Jane and I have recently been in North Africa, set me thinking about the jewellery that Christou, my first wife and I, bought in Algeria in the 1960s.

Most of it we acquired while living in Tlemcen, not far from the Moroccan border.  Once a month or so we would drive the couple of hundred kilometres north to Oran, the great Mediterranean port and birthplace of Albert Camus. For lunch we would always head down the harbour where, for a very modest price, you could eat huge helpings of fish and other seafood, all caught that day and quickly grilled. But our main destination was the great, rambling flea market where we would spend hours trawling the stalls looking for Berber jewellery.

The Berbers are the Celts of North Africa. Just as, in Britain, the inhabitants had the choice either of getting on with the Anglo Saxon invaders as best they could or fleeing - to the north or west, or across the sea - so the indigenous Berbers (those who did not assimilate with the Arabs arriving from the East) headed into the desert or to the mountains.

The most inaccessible  mountains of Algeria are to the east, in Kabylia, and it is there that the most beautiful jewellery is made. The photo above shows a 4-hinged silver bracelet, with blue, yellow and green enamelling. These are the typical colours, though many of the most sought after pieces include beautiful inlays of coral, as in this fine tabzimt, a large circular brooch traditionally bought to celebrate the birth of a son.

                       (Some even have extra pendants added)

               

We managed to find a number of large bracelets (known as amesluh in the Kabyle language)

as well as the occasional necklace.

Sadly, our entire collection disappeared in a burglary at our home in North London. Still we had the joy of owning them for many years, and a few survived which we had given away, especially to my sister in the USA.

Part of the joy, as any collector knows, lies in the act of finding them. The stall holders did not appear to value them particularly, and sometimes we found a piece only after pawing through piles of this that and the other.  The prices went up the more we bought, of course, but we made sure that we chose other things as well, textiles in particular, so that our purchases did not appear too specialised.

What we did not pick up, I realised with a tinge of regret a few years later, were desirable objects which had nothing at all to do with North Africa.  You see, the reason why the great flea market of Oran was absolutely chock a block with goodies in 1965-6 was that much of it had been the property of the pieds noirs (colonists of European origin) who had fled in panic in 1962 when Algeria was about to gain its independence from France after 8 years of bloody struggle. Fearful that the indigenous population would exact a particularly bloody vengeance, many of them had driven to the port or airport, abandoning their cars for anyone to take.

(Their fear was understandable: in early 1961 some disgruntled army officers - realising that General De Gaulle was no longer willing to support the idea of l’Algérie française - had set up a clandestine terrorist group called the OAS - Organisation de l'Armée Secrète. This swiftly gained support among pieds noirs both in Algeria and France and, by September 1962, the OAS had carried out some 2,700 assassinations, mainly of Algerians, in both countries.)

One result of this panic-stricken exodus from Algeria was that over a century’s worth of lovingly collected furniture and household knick knacks were just left behind. Some people, I was told, dumped fridges and washing machines from the balconies of their flats, so as not to leave them behind for the looters who they feared would be moving in as soon as they moved out. But who would smash up great-granny’s precious vase, or the wedding presents from rich aunt Agathe?

And so it was that it would actually have been easier for us to find bronze art nouveau statuettes or art deco lamps than Kabyle jewellery. So why didn’t we?  Well, one reason is that we were in North Africa and it made sense to look for beautiful objects which came from there. Fair enough. But another reason was that, 50 years ago, most people did not think that art nouveau (let alone art deco) was particularly desirable. We certainly didn’t.

Twenty years later, as the French say, our optique  (our way of looking at things) would have changed, and we would have seized the best of these French objects with eager hands, assuming that they would still have been available.

Some discerning people, of course, are ahead of the game: buying art deco,  Pre-Raphaelite paintings or whatever, at a time when they are out of fashion (or, even better, before they come into fashion in the first place).  In a minor way I can remember one or two examples from my own experience. In Leeds, for example, buying a suite of Edwardian walnut furniture for £20, five years before walnut became prized again).

But my best example of a change of optique was when I came back from an auction in Guernsey, in 1963 I think, with a pair of round glass lidded jars, not far off a foot high.  For the first year, 18 months, we were sorry that the jars had incised lettering on them, rather spoiling the look. Two years or so later, people were quite envious of our Smiths’ Crisps jars, asking where we had found them.  ‘Oh, in an auction sale a few years back’, I would say modestly.