Featured Swedish brooch, is it gold or gilt? Who is the maker?

Hi all! I have done a bit of research and so far found out that this brooch is Swedish from Goteborg and dates to 1894. It is testing as 10K which is confusing because there are no gold or silver marks and a similar example says it's gilt silver? I can't find the maker, looks like either S&L or G&L. Any info appreciated!

 

svenson & luhr?

 

Interesting brooch!! Could you open the pin so we can see what's written clearly?? It would probably help more in ID-ing it! Thanks!

 

Oh, maybe? I can't find much about them but I will keep looking, thank you!

 

Made of buttons, or made to look like it was? That was a fashion for a while.

 

So, I zoomed in a bit, and kept it nice & sharp, but my eyes aren't sure if that first mark on the left "looks" like it's a '3 & E or L', with something above the circled 'G' and I 'think' last mark is 'Q..but can't decipher what's next to it....at first I thought 'Q 6', but now not sure that's a '6'.........you might see better with a loupe?

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Hi! Yes I have determined that the G with crown on top is the town mark- Goteborg and the Q6 is the date letter for 1894. I'll take another pic tomorrow of the maker's mark with pin up

 

The marks are Swedish silver marks, indeed, so it is gilt silver from Göteborg, dated 1894, like you already found out.

Maybe the three crowns are obscured under the disk, like the first maker’s initial. I guessed it might be B but couldn’t find a B&L, S&L or G&L in the Swedac records in Göteborg. They may not go that far in time.

 

Great, thanks for the info!

 

I found Svenson & Luhr here https://sok.regionarkivet.se/repository/adresskalender/1894.pdf
page 347 of the pdf. Jewellers, in Göteborg in 1894.

 

That was some seriously impressive detective work, Marote! Did you go through all the 435 pages? It was loading so slowly I gave up…

Just in case Elen hasn’t already found these comparables:

https://www.bukowskis.com/en/lots/8...amt-baltspanne-ca-41-mestadels-silver-allmoge

 

Amazing, thank you!!

 

Apparently similar button brooches were also popular in the Netherlands
https://www.etsy.com/nl/listing/1477106689/antieke-zeeuwse-knoop-broche-spel-zilver

It did indeed take some time to find this. After many other useless Google searches, I found this site but with the 1860 book. Went through the index and didn't find anything usefull. Not thinking it would work, I then replaced the year in the URL, and to my surprise it did give this result (does indeed take a lot of time to load). Scrolled through the pages to the index, and looked under G and S if there was any company with G/S(...) & (or 'och') L(...), and Svenson & Luhr were the only matching one of those options. Page of the book is indicated in the index, so then I just had to skip all other pages to find the ad.
Elementary, my dear Watson

 

Thank you, Sherlock! Patience is not a virtue of mine; I didn’t go down far enough to see there was an index. I found another source that claimed to list all Swedish silversmiths, but they all seemed to be from the 20th C and their search was lousy so I gave up.

I wonder how much the maker’s name actually matters to buyers since they don’t tend to be household names — the approximate age would matter more to me, at least. And that’s my excuse for giving up so easily…

 

That is meant to be the crown of the Gotheborg mark, but the crown shape was lost in translation.

Button-based jewellery can be found all over Europe.
The brooch you posted is part of the traditional dress of Walcheren, Zeeland.