Featured Antique gold pendant / brooch. 40 mark, Russian? Part of modular parure?

I thought about lot for gold, because the zolotnik system for silver and gold is based on the lot system. Both German silver and gold marking used to be based on the Kölner mark, but apparently using different terms: Lot and Karat.
I found a German site which said Norway used to have lot for gold. The Norwegians don't seem to know anything about it.
I'm probably back to the Russian 40 zolotnik which is 10k.

 

This is getting even more interesting, love this research type of post.

 

That's the good thing about this forum, so many of us love to practice the near forgotten art of researching.
I love to get results, but the process teaches you so much. And we get to travel the world for free in just a few sentences.

 

Ha! That is for sure. I'm a firm believer that no matter how much you think you know, it takes a group like this to demonstrate that a joint effort is much more fruitful, we all learn something at one time or another.

 

I still can't completely read it, but the letters don't appear to be Cyrillic. Some Russian marks used the Roman alphabet, though. But it now seems a little less likely to be Russian.

 

Thanks Fig.
Finland was Russian during most of the 19th century. During that time they also used the zolotnik system, but never adopted Cyrillic script.
I'll check Leimat, a Finnish site.

 

The Baltics didn't use Cyrillic for their own languages either, IIRC. The Lithuanians used the Roman alphabet and as far as I know still do. Just to add another rabbit hole to go down.

 

You got me completely lost, but hey! I am coming along for the ride....

 

I don't know what Lithuanian gold marks look like, never seen any, but the language is written in the Latin alphabet. I wrote Roman above...and plead sleep deprivation.(LOL) Every time I see something in Lithuanian I puzzle and puzzle and wonder why I can't read a word ....(facepalm)....

 

I think Roman and Latin are both correct for the alphabet. One source for that information:
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_alphabet

 

So what do you think, any country bordering on the Baltic that was Russian in the 19th century?

 

It wouldn't surprise me. Russian mark with Latin wording, that's what I'd be guessing. The Estonians use the Latin alphabet too, come to think, but I've never seen their gold marks. The Latvians used Russian silver hallmarks, or Russian style anyway, but who knows about gold.

 

Estonia is also on the Baltic and formerly Russian. Most European Russian controlled regions used Russian hallmarks for precious metals, some of the Asian and Caucasian regions as well (if they could get to an assay office).
There is a wealth of information on silver marks, but very little on gold marks. Probably because there are so many collectors of silver tableware.

 

That, and there never was much of the gold floating around. What there was, probably ended up in a melting pot during one crisis or another.

 

Oh, A J, it is so pretty!

I think the upper word is "doublé", (rolled gold) badly struck so lacking the beginning of the word.
Not familiar with these markings, the 40 may indicate there is 40g of gold for a 1000g sheet of rolled gold used to make those pieces.

 

You are so right !!!! And because of you and so many others here...I learn so much about the many things (and there are MANY)--that I know so little about.

 

Thanks, kyra.
There is no room for an extra letter in the cartouche, and someone made fairly deep scratches in two places of the back to test it. The gold is all the way through.
To me the style looks German influenced, big, heavy shapes. Lithuania has always had a pretty strong German influence. Maybe the other Baltic States as well, through the old Hanseatic league. The Hansa cultural legacy is still important in the former Hanseatic towns of northern Europe. And Lufthansa of course.

 

I was thinking the stamp being on a rounded part, it was incomplete...
See pics of the complete doublé mark I found:

 

I see what you mean, I'll see if I can take a picture that shows more of the left side of the mark.

 

I looked at the left side of the mark, there is no room for another letter, and the punch doesn't seem to be worn.

But I did some research on what I see as the German style.
Turns out the Germans had three ways of spelling doublé, the French spelling, duble and dublee. This mark looks like duble.They would often specify the gold fineness.
German doublé was sometimes made with a core of 'viertelgold', an alloy containing 25% gold (like in a lot of Bohemian garnet jewellery). That could be the case with this pendant, making the deep scratches look like gold, the same as the outer gold layers.

Which leaves me with the 40 mark.
There were many German goldsmiths in Russia, ever since the Middle Ages. In the late 19th century there were 1.7 million Germans in Russia.
The craftspeople worked either in the big cities, or in the designated German regions of Russia. These regions had a great deal of autonomy, but had to adhere to certain Russian laws. German was spoken, and the customs, style of dress, etc. were German.
It seems likely that German goldsmiths in one of the designated German regions would make German style jewellery, using Western European techniques like 'duble', but would have to adhere to the Russian law on fineness marking.
This is all just deduction, but I think it could explain the combination of duble and 40.