Victorian Goldstone Compass Pendant

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Victorian Goldstone Compass Pendant

$325.00

Description

DATE: Victorian, c.1890

Charming working compass pendant dating from the latter half of the 19th century, circa 1890. The body comprises a slab of goldstone with faceted edges and the compass set into the centre. Originally designed as a pocket watch fob, it looks great worn as a solitaire pendant, or as part of a charm collection.

Goldstone, also known as aventurine glass or monkstone, is a kind of glittering glass that has come to be used in jewellery as a semiprecious stone. One original manufacturing process for goldstone was invented in seventeenth-century Venice by the Miotti family, which was granted an exclusive license by the Doge. Urban legend says goldstone was an accidental discovery by unspecified Italian monks or the product of alchemy, but there is no pre-Miotti documentation to confirm this. A goldstone amulet from 12th- to 13th-century Persia in the collection of the University of Pennsylvania shows that other, earlier artisans were also able to create the material.

STONES

Goldstone

MEASUREMENTS

2.5 x 1.9cm

WEIGHT

6.7g

MARKS

None present, fittings are brass/pinchbeck

CONDITION

Very good, light wear commensurate with age and use