Featured Victorian? Banded agate brooch

Love to hear any opinions please
Do you think this is likely victorian with the longer pin?
British? I thought the pattern (Black enamel?) was slightly unusual and looked almost Deco but WDIK.
Thankyou for looking

 

Victorian for sure, from the era when mourning jewelry was a fashion statement. I'd be guessing, to be polite about it, 1870-1885 or so. The pin stems got shorter the closer the date got to 1900 and the angular design with a floral background fits in with 1880s design sensibilities. But you Brits are crazy so ... dunno.(LOL)

 

Lol, thankyou!. I was heading to the wrong side of 1900!.

 

LAte 19th, aesthetic. Very nice.

 

Thankyou. I bought it without my glasses and didn’t realise it was banded agate until I got it home.
I’ve just googled aesthetic period jewellery - would this one be of a similar type?. Theirs is gold which mine isn’t but it looks to have a similar geometric design with flowers.

 

Beautiful!!!!!!!!!!

 

Yes, that example is absolutely of the type. The same decorative themes.

 

Lovely find.

 

The band is very faint, but it is there. Also called bull's eye, which this gorgeous brooch is anyway.
The angularity is taken from an Islamic star, part of the Orientalist influence on Aesthetic jewellery.

 

For reference, this archeological revival style bull's eye agate has inscriptions memorializing deaths in 1870 & 1871:





The glass for the memento compartment is gone although the frame for it is still there. The underside of the agate & the teeth holding it would have been hidden when all was intact. It does not test as gold for my jeweller. Since 9ct doesn't qualify as gold in the US, could be that, gold filled, or pinchbeck. It has nice color & is solidly made.

KSW's brooch must have looked pretty newfangled when bought.

 

Without my glasses I was damn lucky to even see that it was a brooch.

But it is a British brooch?

Thankyou

Good word

 

Absolutely British - we stole designs from all over.

 

Yes. Jewelllery with stones chosen because they were interesting, not because they were precious or semi-precious, doesn't really seem to have caught on in the US during that period. Mourning jewellery itself doesn't seem as prevalent here.

You would think the word itself would be newfangled, but it is an old one. I was very surprised to encounter it near the end of Mallory's Morte d'Arthur, where he says something about the people being so newfangled that after the death of Arthur they chose Constantine as their king.