85 - AN EARLY 20TH CENTURY PIN BROOCH, WITH 'A' CROWNED MONOGRAM

AN EARLY 20TH CENTURY PIN BROOCH, WITH 'A' CROWNED MONOGRAM The brooch designed as the crowned monogram 'A', mounted on a horizontal pin terminating in a coiled hook. Probably German or Central European. Stamped 333, with a further 'A' and small cross mark and an indecipherable maker's mark Size/dimensions: 4.30cm wide Gross weight: 4.37g There is natural darkening and patina in the recesses of the monogram and around the marks, with minor handling wear, fine scratches, tiny pits and some unevenness of colour. The pin stem and coiled catch are intact, straight and in working order. The brooch is offered in very good condition. 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.