UNIQUE MUSEUM QUALITY ANTIQUE ENGLISH SILVER ROCK CRYSTAL EGG LOCKET c1700

Description

A curious museum piece that’s survived for over 300 years! This large Restoration period egg locket is made with transparent genuine rock crystal, hand cut, carved out and polished with tapered wall thickness to create a decent sized compartment within. Its silver fittings are all original with beaded shaping and superb, typical 17th/18th century enamel decoration to its two minimal silver bands. The hinge works well and it’s in surprisingly good condition for its age. There’s no sign of any fittings or places for fittings to be worn as a pendant, so it’s probably a decorative locket to be sat on a velvet cushion in a gentleman’s library or drawing room.
Please see my Instagram post here for a short video of how it opens and behaves in the hand: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bn8o7AQB0yn/.
It dates from around the late 1600's to early 1700's and is in very good, fully wearable condition throughout, with one or two small areas of enamel loss and slight movement to areas of the enamel bands, though neither are loose right now. There are a few small inclusions of a few mm's to the crystals, these are natural and original. The adhesive holding the crystals to the silver mount is very old and may well be original. It weighs 70.1 grams and measures 2 x 1 ½ inches. The final photo shows it with a US penny (1 cent) coin for scale, which measures 19 mm / ¾ of an inch diameter.
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