Featured Antique Painted Pin

I have a curious brooch pin and would like some help , don’t know anything about these .Its silver I think size just under 2 inches by 2 inches any help appreciated thank you.

 

Those painted porcelain plaques are usually German.
KPM was one of the main maker.
The subject of a woman smoking is... breathtakingly unusual!

 

Yes thought it was unusual will have a look to see thanks for the pointers.

 

Smoking! That is unusual. Wonder if her deshabille combined with the cigarette signals she's a woman of easy virture. (G** I hate euphemisms, especially when applied to women.) Better said... a prostitute. Suspect so as she appears to be wearing boudoir garments. And that would explain the quality of the piece. Inexpensive and of low quality in its time.

Debora

 

Courtesan.

 

Would that be German style scroll work around the piece ?

 

So would she be described as "smokin' hot" back in her day I wonder

 

I think the lady could be my favourite 19th century lady (and countess ), the amazing Lola Montez. She was a smoker, didn't feel any need to comply with convention. She also had a relationship with Ludwig I of Bavaria, so this could be Bavarian porcelain.
She was not a prostitute but a woman who knew her own mind and lived by it. A true power woman.
@Bronwen , Lola alert.

Lola with cigarette on an 1852 Daguerrotype:


https://www.anothermag.com/fashion-...ontez-dancer-countess-whip-wielding-socialist

 

That cig is defying the laws of gravity as it's positioned next to the index finger.

 

As I said, Lola was amazing.

 

Oh come on! She obviously had a magnetic personality!

 

Another clue that the image is that of a prostitute is that her hair is not fully pinned up.

Debora

 

Lola was an adventuress, like Irene Adler.

 

I think the pin is missing buy I think I can see the catch for the pin opposite the hinge?

 

That only proves that the lady was likely to have spent most of her life outside Victorian Britain or countries with similar restrictions.

Elisabeth of Austria, queen and empress, cousin of Ludwig. By no means a prostitute, but a respectable woman who did not live according to Victorian values, simply because she had nothing to do with anything 'Victorian'. Most of the world didn't. (Not that the Austro-Hungarian court was much fun...)



Elisabeth (Sissi) also smoked in public, btw. And she had a tattoo.

 

Ah... The "I got you." exception. But to point out the obvious... The pin does not depict a woman of position in a formal portrait. She's wearing her night clothes with her hair undone and smoking a cigarette. In Victorian times, those would have been instantly recognizable attributes.

Debora

 

Not so much in 'K und K' times (Austro-Hungarian), or in Berlin in those days, for instance.
Victorian is specific for Britain and countries that followed British customs. Britain was notorious in the rest of Europe for its restrictions.