Featured Bar Brooch identification help please?

Hello! Further to the request I put up earlier for help identifying the marks on a ring that had come with a lot of silver jewellery, there was also this rather nice bar brooch. On examination the only marks I can find on it appear to say "9ct" stamped onto the back, which leads me to suspect it is a piece of 9ct white gold with a seed pearl. There is also a jewellers mark scratched onto the back of the brooch and "META" stamped onto the pin. The styling is art deco and I suspect it's probably from around the 1930s? Was it normal somewhere in the world at that date to mark gold with "9ct"? Thank you!

 

Agree.

British gold was often marked 9ct, and so was gold from Aus and NZ.

 

Matt, I just re-read your post, but the pearl is too big to be a seed pearl. Seed pearls are the smallest size pearl.

 

British. It says METAL rather than META, meaning the pin is steel. I see these quite a bit here. 1920s ish and that's a stock number.

 

It’s missing it’s safety chain which would have been attached to the ring at the hinge end, (if you were wondering what the empty ring was for).

 

Well spotted!

 

This is what @Houseful means. You can still buy replacements.

 

Ah ok the teeny tiny ones like they use on rings? This is just small pearl?

 

These are seed pearls, around a Persian blue turquoise:

 

Ah yes mine is much larger than that, although still quite small, about 5mm diameter.

 

A small pearl.

 

Just as a little aside, there was also this hinged bracelet in the same silver lot, clearly marked, although tiny, 375 9ct gold... set with 7 tiny diamonds. It must have been my lucky day! Must have been my lucky day!

 

That ring is a beauty!

 

Wonderful to be so lucky, and it is really pretty.

It sure is. It isn't mine, just a photo to illustrate what I meant.

 

Great when that happens!