Tiffany & Co. Pansy Brooch, ca. 1905
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GUEST:
It's a family piece, and I don't know, uh, much about it, other than it came down through a cousin to my grandmother, then to my parents, and then to me.
APPRAISER:
So this is a pansy brooch. This dates to around the turn of the 1900s.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
1900 up to 1910. Somewhere in that era. And this one is great, because it's got three pansies. Commonly, you'll see brooches with just a singular pansy on it. And this one also has a great enamel coloring to it, and very impressive that that enamel has survived so well over all these years. Did you ever wear it?
GUEST:
A couple of times, yeah.
APPRAISER:
Oh, yeah?
GUEST:
I just, I'm always worried I would lose it.
APPRAISER:
Right, yeah, I can imagine. And you never saw, like, whoever gave it to you wearing it? Or anybo...
GUEST:
My grandmother wore it, and then my mother wore it.
APPRAISER:
They took excellent care of it, that's great.
GUEST:
Yeah, thanks.
APPRAISER:
This one has, in the middle, old-European-cut diamonds, which was very indicative of the type of diamond cut you would see in that era. A really fun piece is, is that one of them is loose.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
And kind of moves around a little bit. (chuckles)
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
And what did you say your grandmother called that?
GUEST:
Drops of dew.
APPRAISER:
Drops of dew on the pansies.
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
That's awesome. And you can see that it moves inside the petals. Did you ever try to find a signature on it?
GUEST:
I did. And I was never able to find one. It was marked in the family's provenance as a Tiffany. So I'm, like, it's gotta be here somewhere, and I just could never find it.
APPRAISER:
Yeah, it, it wasn't easy to find. (chuckles) It's on the back of one of the stems and it's textured.
GUEST:
Ah.
APPRAISER:
Making it more difficult to find. This is back when Louis Comfort Tiffany was running the company and the designs, Tiffany Studios.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
I'm not sure if they actually designed this one or they retailed it-- they would do a little bit of both. So the signature's on there. Also, the diamonds are a pretty good size.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
Most of the pansy brooches I see have a much smaller diamond, anywhere from about a tenth of a carat, maybe slightly larger.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
Each one of these is about a quarter of a carat.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
Nice size. Also, of course, being from Tiffany...
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
...very good-quality diamonds.
GUEST:
(chuckles) Right.
APPRAISER:
When I was doing a little research on this, the much smaller versions were selling at retail for around $5,000. But this is not the same thing. This has much larger diamonds of much finer quality, and that Tiffany thing takes us the extra mile. I would suspect that in a retail situation, you could easily get $15,000 to $20,000 for this.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
Yeah.
GUEST:
That's excellent. (chuckles) Thank you so much.
APPRAISER:
Thanks for bringing it in, it’s a great-looking piece.
GUEST:
Yeah.
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