Featured Tiny vinaigrette

Good Day

I'm looking for help with information regarding this delightful tiny vinaigrette, which measures a mere 17mm x 16mm.

I have studied the gold bands carefully and can find no hallmarks of any kind.

I would be interested to know what kind of stone it is made of. Also any explanation for why it is not marked. It looks awfully like rose gold and I can't imagine someone making something like this in plate or pinchbeck. I did see a comment somewhere that gold below 9gm did not require hallmarks. Could this be the answer?

 

Wow! that's a tiny one!!!
Stone is blood jasper/ jaspe sanguin

 

It is really delightful.

Thank you for your prompt response.

 

It is really lovely, and I agree, bloodstone/jasper, also called heliotrope.

 

I do know that items from the mid to late 1800s made of 9 or 10K are not always marked.
Not sure about the requirement for hallmarks and when it became mandatory.

 

Marking all depends on where it was made and what the fineness is.
@Silver , where did you find it?

 

"Heliotrope" ... I like that name for it

 

It belonged to my mother and she acquired it from a British collector who lived in Egypt for much of her life. Are vinaigrettes not a peculiarly British phenomenon? I've never seen a silver vinaigrette without British hallmarks.

 

That's interesting! No, this one has no means of suspending it from a chain.

 

That would be great. Don't get lost in that abyss.

 

They do appear to be similar sizes.

 

Hallmarks have been sort of mandatory for a long time, but small objets de vertue often escape. The legal limit was a gramme, I think. Much 18th C jewellery isn't marked and 19th C often just has something like 9 ct on it.

Might well be one of ours. But it's also feasible it was commissioned in Egypt by a colonial.