Silver Art Deco Basse-Taille Marcasite Flower Brooch

Remember the basse-taille butterflies I posted about yesterday? The brooch pictured above is a different example of basse-taille work. It’s marked “KV 800” (800 is the fineness of the silver out of 1000 — sterling is 0.925) and is probably German. Unfortunately, it suffers from a lot of enamel loss. On the plus side, it still has all of its glittering marcasite stones.

Gun metal grey marcasites are made from pyrite (fool’s gold). It first gained popularity in Georgian times, really took off during the Victorian rage for mourning jewellery and hit its peak in the 1920s and 1930s as an inexpensive alternative to diamonds. Most of these Deco-era pieces were made in Germany between the wars. Of course they still use marcasites in jewellery today, but because labour was a lot cheaper in the ’20s and ’30s, the level of craftsmanship was much higher. In older pieces, stones were painstakingly bead set (click on the picture and you’ll see the little claws holding the marcasites in place). In newer pieces, the stones are usually glued in. Sometimes they were pasted in in older pieces as well. But the bead set pieces have more value on the resale market.