Brooches (16), late 19th and early 20th Century

A group of small brooches belonging to Lady Mary St.John, 5th Viscountess Bolingbroke. The brooches form part of modest collection of jewellery which was preserved by her son, Vernon St.John, 6th Viscount Bolingbroke.

Lady Mary clearly had a fondness for bar brooches, elongated horizontal type brooches worn at the neck. These first appeared in the 1890's and rapidly became popular. The early Victorian examples, of which there are several in the collection, feature a simple bar with a central gem or motif. Amongst these type some are set with small diamonds and one features a drop pearl.

Two of the bar broches, are mourning brooches, easily identified by their black colour. Mourning jewellery was made fashionable by Queen Victoria after the death of her beloved Prince Albert and continued to be popular in the Edwardian era.

Other pieces are made of paste, a cheap alternative for those who could not afford the real thing which almost certainly applied to the increasingly impoverished Lady Bolingbroke.

The production of paste jewellery began in France in the 18th century and was very realistic, and thought to have more sparkle than the gems they were imitating. So much so, that King Louis XV of France appointed a maker of paste jewels as ‘jeweller to the king’.