Sunday, March 20, 2016

Art Nouveau Brooch

For anyone interested in antique jewelry:

This one is a handmade art nouveau style brooch (made somewhere around 1905 give or take a couple of years).

It is made in a simple wire design (9ct gold) and set with two garnet topped doublets as flowers.

The garnet topped doublet was popular in the 18th and 19th century and used in Victorian and Edwardian jewelry.  Once it was discovered that glass fuses easily with garnet, this technique was used to imitate ruby, sapphire, emerald and other colored gemstones. The top, (crown) was garnet, the bottom (pavilion) was green, blue, or red glass, an optical illusion, only the color of the bottom layer shows- the garnet provides no color, but since garnet is much harder than glass, these composite stones last much longer compared to simple paste (glass).

No comments:

Post a Comment