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Unforgettable heart-shaped gold Christmas family locket (circa 1897)


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WM041

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eNum: 0714.APEN.2439

Remember… A memory… Forget me not…
In the Italian, as suggested by the spelling of Dicembre 1897.
Beautiful piece of antique jewellery, a real Christmas piece
It is contained in a beautiful handmade leather box and when we open up the box it reveals the most beautiful locket and chain
It was made circa 1890.
It is a really heavy weight and large Locket, and it is made in fifteen carat yellow gold.

At the front of the locket we have two initials, V and C, beautifully executed in a floral design, and these are obviously the initials of the original owner of the Locket. The background behind the initials is further engraved in a very fine detailed floral pattern which highlights the initials to the front.

Then when we turn the Locket around to the back we have the word Ricordo (not the name Ricardo after closer inspection) written on the locket, making it a momento or keepsake, a forget-me-not as they are called in jewellery. And it’s beautifully hand engraved again in a floral type design and is dated on the back the 25th of December 1897.

So imagine in 1897 for Christmas Day somebody receives this beautiful locket.
So let’s have a look inside the locus.
So what’s really rare about this locket is that it’s a family locket, so you’ve got 6 portraits inside.
I feel that the top portrait on the left hand side is the mother of the family and the father of the family on the opposite, and then their four children.
The photographs are beautiful in their detail and they’re so small, which would have been very rare and hard to do and expensive to do in 1897.
Then in between the locket and the photos we’ve got this beautiful floral design and engraved pattern all intertwining in between each of the beautiful portraits.

It was obviously known as a family locket and these are the one family and it is just a really, really unusual and rare piece.

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