Featured Amber!

While one side of my ancestry is English, the other side is Polish. Among my mother’s jewelry collection is quite a bit of Amber received from Polish relatives in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. My favorites are the polished large nugget necklace and the teardrop pendant. The pendant has a silver tip and bale with a post-1986 Polish 925 Gdansk hallmark. Any opinions offered on these pieces are welcome!




I do have particular questions about a 9 karat gold-framed brooch. It’s English, not Polish, and I’m wondering what the stone could be? Looks a bit similar to amber but does not have the warm cognac/honey coloring. It is marked 9 ct and W.W&S, which one source claims to be William Wood & Sons, an old London outfit.
(Pictures in next post.)

 

Lovely jewellery, bluumz, nice, natural Baltic amber. That large nugget necklace would be my favourite too.

Does it feel warm, like amber, or colder?

 

Frankly, the amber feels cool to me, I keep a cool temp in my home.
It does feel very like the polished amber pendant.

Edit: Info on possible age of the brooch is appreciated.

 

Dendritic agate is probable

Nice amber collection

 

I've never heard of that, thanks for the lead.
Preliminary research makes it probable, as you say, despite my piece not having the pretty fern or landscape pattern.

Thank you!

 

You can see dendrits in the center of your brooch
With the system being tube hinge and C clasp, and the style of the etched decor it is around 1860/1880

 

Lovely, thank you!

 

Looks like you got some chips off the old blocks.

I agree with kyra, basically a dendritic agate-type stone, especially in the center, with some other geologic process going on farther out that created the swirls. Agate defies our attempts to classify it into neat, discrete, categories. The Victorians, with their curio cabinets, made jewellery using all kinds of pretty and/or interesting stones that were not the usual gemstones. 'Bullseye' agates were almost their own genre. Like people everywhere it seems, they also like cornelian (the Brits use the original name) jewellery, & this fits both bills.

Unless the marks contradict me, I would guess later Victorian, going by the way the hinge looks like it has a piece that exerts slight pressure on the pin stem when closed, helping it to stay that way, & causing it to pop up a little when released. Very pretty piece.

 

I would also say later, given the type of engraving around the edge. The length of the pin too, it doesn't extend much beyond the c-clasp the way the earlier pins do, although that isn't always something to go by.

 

Or chunks in this case!

 

Bluumz....I can no longer comment on amber....as it seems I'm wrong 50% of the time...........
That said....................NICE AMBER !!!!!!!

 

Instead of being a picturesque fern-y landscape, I think it looks like a bad night at sea.

 

Those overlong pin stems would have let you bury the end back into the fabric as a safety measure; better ones had guard chains as well. The simple adaptation on this one keeps it more firmly closed, so less need for extra length on the pin. And have seen it too; sometimes those long pins found their way onto later pieces as well.