79 - AN EARLY 20TH CENTURY PENDANT, WITH MONOGRAM OF EMPRESS ZITA OF AUSTRIA

AN EARLY 20TH CENTURY PENDANT, WITH MONOGRAM OF EMPRESS ZITA OF AUSTRIA The pendant designed as the crowned monogram 'Z' of Empress Zita of Austria (1892-1989), on a ground of translucent pink-red guilloché enamel within a laurel wreath border, beneath the Austrian Imperial Crown. With suspension loop to the reverse. Maker's mark 'SJS' Vienna mark and dog's head mark for 14ct gold Size/dimensions: 3.20cm x 1.80cm Gross weight: 5.49g The enamel is intact, and the front retains bright lustre and sharp detail to the crown and wreath. The reverse shows heavy tarnish, spots of oxidation and fine hairline cracking to the inner back plate, but the structure is sound. The suspension loop is thinned at the top but should not affect wear. The pendant is offered in very good condition. Zita, born a Princess of Bourbon-Parma, was the last Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary. She reigned only from November 1916 to November 1918, which places this jewel in the final two years of the Habsburg monarchy. She lived on in exile for seventy years. Between the mid-nineteenth century and the First World War, the stick pin was an essential accessory for any well-dressed man, worn to secure and ornament the folds of a cravat or tie. It was also one of the most personal gifts a sovereign or royal household could bestow. Pins set with a crowned cypher or monogram were given as tokens of favour and remembrance to courtiers, officials, household staff, visiting dignitaries, and the guests and companions of royal shooting parties, regattas and state visits. Small enough to be given freely, yet unmistakably royal, they carried their recipient's connection to the court wherever they were worn. Reading these jewels is part of their appeal. The initials are often intertwined or mirrored so that they read in either direction, sometimes with a regnal numeral, and the form of the crown above signals rank: imperial and royal crowns, the archducal crown of the Habsburgs, and the strawberry-leaved coronet of a duke. Many pins survive in the cases of the court jewellers who supplied them, and the cases in this section form a small directory of royal patronage, from Sy & Wagner, Court Goldsmiths in Berlin, and V. Mayer's Söhne, Imperial and Royal Court Jewellers in Vienna, to E. & R. Altenloh, purveyors to the King and Queen of the Belgians, and Benzie of Cowes, the yachtsmen's jeweller. The families represented here, among them Hanover, Denmark, Belgium, Bavaria, Saxony, Prussia and Habsburg Austria, were closely bound together by marriage, and pins such as these passed freely between their courts. Within a few years, many of these monarchies had gone. The war that began with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 ended in 1918 with the fall of the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires, and the crowned cyphers on these small gold jewels belong to a world that vanished almost overnight.