Featured Old gold brooch with silver picture inset?

Hello all, I have come to you once again with a bit of a mystery I would love to solve and am turning to your expertise here on this board in the hopes of finding out more! I really hope perhaps you can help shed some light on this brooch I have just bought. I have googled and googled and cannot seem to find anything similar enough to it to tell me more, but I may be googling the completely wrong terms of course.

It's an unmarked gold brooch which I have tested and came up as 9ct gold. The pin and clasp on the back tell me it's older and possibly antique, but I'm not sure how old. So far so good I suppose. Here's where it gets puzzling - for me anyway. It has a glass front similar to an antique mourning brooch, but instead of hair beneath it, it has a silver picture inset. The silver part is loose and moves about when you shake the brooch; behind it is what looks like old black fabric. I have seen brooches that have monograms loose inside them but have not seen a picture in them like this before.

The picture itself puzzled me at first too but up close you can tell it's a whole bunch of battle / war-related items piled together - there's a halberd axe, a rifle (or musket), two crossed pikes (I think), a drum, a cannon, a flag or banner and a trumpet.

Does anyone know what the meaning of this brooch may be? Could it be some kind of memorial brooch and what is this style of brooch with a picture inside called? Any ideas on how old it may be? Thank you very much for any insight you may be able to offer - it is much appreciated!

ETA: it measures approximately 1" across.

 

It looks like some sort of insignia made from metal, not really a picture. I don't think it's military, but here are what some military ones might look like:

https://www.google.com/search?clien......0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..1.0.0....0.425oiD4rbgQ

If it was attached to cloth in the back, and now it's loose, then it's also not like any other one that I've seen. As you mentioned, the pin and clasp do appear to be an old style.

 

Oh man. I have seen that "logo" before. The question is where.

 

Very interesting! I forgot to mention I got it in the UK. I did think it might possibly have something to do with regimental symbols, but you don’t think it’s anything military then?

That is a great point about it having been attached to the cloth at theback before. I hadn’t thought about it, but yes it very well may have been!

Thank you for your input!

 

Oh wow that is very exciting! I hope you may remember where you’ve seen it!

 

Oh, search your memory bank!

 

If you turn the image 90 degrees to the right (so the point of the pin is down) I think you will have the appropriate orientation.

It might be European, but could be American too. Something in the back of my brain is whispering "military band."

 

Lovely Aureliel.
Nice old clasp, the hinge and the length of the pin certainly make it a proper antique. Probably ca 1870.
With 9ct it is likely to be either UK or North American.
I've seen the image before too, like Bakers my memory won't help.

 

A niggle at the back of my skull says Scottish. Not military, or a band, but some battle commemorative. Culloden? I'd think British, given where you bought it, and the fact that the style is so common here.

 

I'd say British as well.
The battle of Culloden was in 1746, long before this brooch was made. It doesn't look like a Jacobite (political) brooch, which would be earlier as well.

 

Assuming the brooch & the symbol are contemporary is like concluding from a Confederate battle flag on a US car bumper that the American Civil War is still in progress. (Well, it is, but that's a different matter.) There's no reason the symbolism of the brooch can't refer to something well in the past. However, also no reason the brooch does not express something that was current or in the recent past when it was made.

It would not have to be a mourning brooch; it could be a sweetheart brooch. I suspect at some point it has come open & been put back together upside down. Pin stems mounted horizontally usually go so that they would insert from right to left. In that case Aureliel's photo would be right side up. Pins mounted vertically run top to bottom, as Bakersgma proposes. It does not appear the contents themselves would fit in the compartment if rotated 90 degrees, but the only way the drum in the middle of the assemblage looks right to me requires the pin to run bottom to top:



The drum is prominent, think the drumsticks are crossed behind it, as are a long gun & a cannon and, I think, a flag & a pennant with a battle axe rising vertically in the center. Oh, & maybe the bell of a bugle aimed downward? Strike me as generic military symbols. The prominent placement of the drum could be a compositional choice rather than holding any meaning, i.e., not the emblem of a drum corps, just useful in covering up all that crisscrossing.

Cameos I own with a vertical pin all seem to come from roughly the 1st third of the 19th century. Possible the brooch was made then, originally held a hair memento, which was replaced later with this.

Army wife/sweetheart/widow, not naval:

 

Thanks for the enlargement, Bronwen! The flag might have a cross on it.

 

Think it does. So many flags are quartered this way, there may or may not be any significance to it. I have an empty mourning brooch (black enamel all around) that came from England. Horizontal pin; same rounded closed back.

 

Not really, Jacobite jewellery is nothing like Confederate symbols. And the Jacobite cause can in no way be compared to the Confederate cause.
Jacobite jewellery dates from a specific period. No Jacobite jewellery was produced after that period, it was simply not relevant. Even during the recent Scottish independence aspirations, no Jacobite jewellery was made, just the usual Celtic and Scottish jewellery that has been made ever since the early 19th century, when the ban on Highland symbols was lifted.
Some Scottish people will occasionally toast to 'the king across the water' (Stewart pretender to the throne, who lived in France), a Jacobite toast. But that is about as far as it goes. The current Stewart pretender to the throne, the duke of Bavaria, has no interest in claiming the throne, so the house of Hannover/Windsor can relax.
There is no Jacobite symbol on this brooch. Here is a list of Jacobite symbols:
https://cullodenbattlefield.wordpress.com/2015/07/31/the-secret-symbols-of-the-jacobites/

 

I was not comparing anyone's causes, merely pointing out that symbols & emblems can be used long after whatever they originally signified is well in the past, the way Confederate flags are. Just because the Battle of Culloden was before the brooch was made, what is to prevent a descendant of a participant, or anyone, from wearing jewellery that refers to it? I am not convinced the piece is connected to any particular event.

 

Nothing is, but any Jacobite jewellery would have been antique at the time this brooch was made. Jacobite jewellery simply wasn't made during that period. Jacobite jewellery dates from ca 1715 - late 18th century. Most of it was made between 1715 and 1746. The battle of Culloden was in 1746.

 

I really don't think it has anything to do with the Jacobites, but if it did, I could see it as a covert expression of anti-Hanoverian sentiment. My best guess is that the brooch originally had a hair memento & was worn horizontally. Someone later replaced the hair with this metal bit that had meaning for them, maybe closing it up without realizing the pin was now upside down and maybe not willing or not able to remove the glass again.

BTW, does anyone know how the glass does come off? Does it come off once it has been closed? Can't see how the glass in the brooch I have could be removed without damage.

 

It's utterly wrong to suggest that jewellery harking back to, and with sentimental attachement to Jacobite causes was not produced in the 19th century and equally wrong to imply that it is not still so made. My ancestry is in part Scottish, and I know well what happened in our referenda. Brownwen is quite right.

I'll remember what this is eventually.

 

I don't think it's anything specific. It's a compilation of themed elements called a trophy. There are military trophies, love trophies, hunting trophies, music trophies, etc., etc.
https://www.google.ca/search?dcr=0&.....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..10.0.0....0.7bYvOfPiMA4

 

Oh that is brilliant, the first picture in your link looks just like it, too! Thank you!! Very exciting to know what it is. After checking out the (beautiful!) images in your link, I searched for trophy brooches but could only find (also absolutely beautiful) paste-set ones, and none with a silver metal inset like this one. Still, it is very clear that is what it is. How cool!

I noticed your google link was set to wood carved trophies from the 18th century, do you perhaps know if they were still fairly common in the 19th century as well? Googling exactly the same terms you did but with "19th" instead of "18th" got me quite different results - some trophies (wood) that were slightly similar-looking but also lots of different things, deer's heads and things like that. Whereas googling it with "18th" yields many results that far more closely resemble the metal picture inside the brooch.

I guess I'm wondering - since the brooch seems definitely later than the 18th century - if perhaps the silver metal bit inside it could be older than the brooch, rather than the other way around?