Antique Victorian Dove Messenger Bird Letter Paste Silver Repousse Brooch Pin

  

Tests for 800 silver, glass. Why You'll Love It.

This antique Victorian brooch is a true treasure. The hand-crafted bird design is a mesmerizing display of intricate detail and dimensional realism, made all the more remarkable by its featherlight weight. Symbolic of a loved one's return, with an envelope in its beak and a gleam in the eye, it is both sweet and heartwarming. The silver surface is enhanced by an array of tiny patterns for the most beguiling shimmer. Bright patina with minimal surface wear to the setting.

Fresh sheen, light surface wear, and no chipping on the glass. Symbolism in antique and vintage jewelry is common, yet it can be hard to spot if you don't know what you're looking for. Often, specific natural gemstones, flowers, birds, and motifs like stars and anchors were imbued with meanings that have fallen out of present-day society's collective memory. To appreciate the power of symbols in antique jewelry is to imagine what it would have been like to wear the piece and step back into history. A young Queen Victoria assumed her role in 1837 and her taste in jewelry quickly became culturally influential, within England and beyond.

Her relationship to jewelry was enmeshed with her husband, Prince Albert, who gifted the Queen for their engagement, a snake ring, embedded with an emerald (her birthstone) in its head. Continuing from the Georgian era and intensified by Queen Victoria. Taste, sentimental and figural jewelry was a major trend throughout the Victorian era. When certain ideas and words were deemed too forward or improper to be spoken, jewelry and symbolic meaning was used to communicate what was left unsaid. _gsrx_vers_1536 GS 9.4 (1536).