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- Description:
- This interesting brooch combines styles popular in the 1850s and 1860s, namely the bow know form with the dead gold metal (bright yellow metal that is produced without a sheen) and Etruscan filigree (delicate dots of gold that imitates Etruscan filigree decoration) that were popular primarily from the 1830s on.Etruscan filigree, really granulated drops of gold, was revived by Giulio Castellani of Britain who learned of the work from a scholar studying the ancients.He popularized the Etruscan revival style and it was seen on jewelry until the 1880s.This piece is nice, but not finely worked.The interlocking circles, circular Etruscan filigree decoration on the metal surfaces of the brooch, and the hair in the back of the pendant suggests that this is a mourning brooch.The interlocking components indicate lives entwined.The circles of the Etruscan filigree may suggest everlasting life, which is the symbolism of mourning wreaths.The hair in the back of the stone also suggests that this pin was used for mourning.
- Date Issued:
- [1855 TO 1865]
- Data Provider:
- Wayne State University. Libraries and The Henry Ford
- Collection:
- Digital Dress Collection
- Description:
- This may have been used in mourning and may memorialize the gentleman depicted on the brooch.Earlier mourning brooches included watercolors of likenesses of the deceased but daguerreotypoes, our first real photographs, records the extraordinary image of the deceased.The bit of hair on the back of the brooch may be the hair of the gentleman depicted but this cannot be verified.The curator has seen few brooches set with photographs, either daguerreotypes orthe later tintypes; this is a rare survival.
- Date Issued:
- [1840 TO 1860]
- Data Provider:
- Wayne State University. Libraries and The Henry Ford
- Collection:
- Digital Dress Collection