Tag Archives: Retro brooch

How to wear vintage jewelry: brooches, pins and clips (part IV)

Here is a selection of some alternative ways to wear a brooch on cocktail dresses and frog gowns. You can accentuate your body parts, you can hide a zipper or tighten a dress or just stand out from the crowd.

Showers of Sapphire

showers of sapphire in a 18K gold brooch

showers of sapphires in 18K gold retro brooch

I found these wonderful showers of sapphires in a Paris auction. It’s a beautiful French 18K gold retro brooch and a good example of 1940s escapism.

Escapism of the 1940s was an important motif in pre- and mid-war jewelry. Eye-catching jewelry was used to forget the doom and gloom of the war. Jewels were extravagant and extrovert, bold and bossy with voluptuous curves and plumed up into massive 3-dimensial designs. Jewelry was bursting with ribbons of yellow gold and showers of sapphires*. Indulge yourself with a beautiful pin and lift WWII  escapism to modern hedonism. It is more contemporain than ever.

* quotes from “Antique and Twentieth century jewellery” by Vivienne Becker (chapter 22).

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The story behind the rose on my page

REtro French rose brooch 18k gold and diamond hart 1940s

Retro French rose brooch in 18K gold and diamond hart 1940s

I came across this delicate rose at a local French auction and fell in love with it. It resembles an Eglantine rose, like the ones I have in my garden (for the garden lovers: Rosa rugosa “Blanc double de Coubert”). The petals are made of gold mesh, a technique which was introduced in 1946. The French call this style “ à tamis” or ”sieve”. The diamond hart you can scroll off and can be replaced by a gemstone hart in a different colour, but unfortunately this pin is missing the blue or pink hart. The rose can be worn as a pin but also as a pendant. The petals can move slightly back and forwards so that the rose closes itself for the night.
Besides the hallmarks for 18K gold, the back of the rose is stamped: “BTE SGDG”, this mention was in use between 1844 and 1968. “Bte” is short for “breveté” (=“patented”) and ” S.G.D.G.” stands for “Sans Garantie Du Gouvernement” =”without government guarantee” and means that the government was not liable for the working of the product.

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