Posted 7 years ago
BelleEpoque
(98 items)
To start the year, I want to share this beautiful, delicate pendant. It is made of several individual handmade silver leaves and flowers arranged around a lovely bright carnelian cabochon. It has a mother of pearl drop and even the bale is decorated. Sadly it is missing one tiny flower. There are no marks but it reminds me of the work of Arthur and Georgie Gaskin, especially the flowers are very much in their style. I'd like to think that maybe it was made by one of their students at the Birmingham school of Art :) What do you think?
Hi Belle, your pendant is lovely. I don't think the flower would be too hard to restore if you have a jeweller who understands antique hand made jewellery.
I think you are right that it is a student piece. It's hard to say if it's Birmingham School or not. There were so many schools, associations & groups. I've never figured out what identifies a piece as being by the Birmingham School, it seems a bit random.
If you are interested in seeing a good selection of original Gaskin pieces you might want to borrow Der Moderne Still published by Arnoldsche from your library.
Thanks for the tip, Jewels! I will look up the book. In any case, I love the pre-Raphaelite feel of this piece, and the attention to detail, even if it's not by a big-name maker.
It's really beautiful.
One of the advantages of collecting Arts & Crafts jewels is that you can often buy randomly beautiful little pieces of art like this to wear at affordable prices.
You never know when you find that clue that leads you to an attribution, all big name makers were students at some stage!
Talking students, the Arnoldsche book also has a good selection of Guild of Handicraft (and others) so it's worth a look. It's a big heavy book of original period photos of all sorts of objects.
I forgot to mention, the V & A has now published it's holdings of Gaskin designs online. It's not the easiest archive to search but it's very useful.
Thanks a lot for all the info, Jewels. I do have the Arnoldsche book, but don't have any literature on the Gaskins specifically, so I'll check out the V&A site :)