Featured Cathleen McLain Brutalist bird's nest? pin - need help with stones please.

I was going through the the jewelry hoard again last week. I ended up taking about 10 flats of assorted costume jewelry, a flat of assorted lapel pins, a flat of assorted rhinestone jewelry, along with a small clump of sterling silver & gold to the local auction house. I won't know the results for a week or so because of the way their payouts fall but hopefully I will be pleased.

I did luck out with the lapel pins though. I thought I had checked everything already, but this one Kiwanis pin looked different to me. I unscrewed the back to see a nice clear 10K mark.

Anyway, I found this pin amongst the bounty of pins & brooches. It is signed on the back & I was able to find the artist online. My questions are about the 3 off-white beads or stones at the top of the pin & would this be considered an enamel over copper or??? Also, what is your opinions on the "goldish" stuff towards the bottom. I saw where she worked a lot with sterling, but I saw no mention of gold in any of the pins online.

After looking at it for the past few days I am beginning to think it might be her representation of a bird's nest with the 3 oval things being the eggs.

It measures 1 5/8" across (including the pieces sticking out over the edge) by 1 3/8" to to bottom.

BTW just an FYI, I found her Facebook page & this artist passed away back in March of 2022. From what I could gather she had been producing & selling her jewelry since the 1980s.

Any other thoughts would be most welcome!!








Thanks for any & all advice or opinions!!

 

They look like little opals to me.

 

They don't really have the fire that you usually see in opals. They are shiny but are just the solid off-white color.

 

The mineral opal is white. Color & fire depend on inclusions & fractures. I'm seeing little pinpoints of orange & green on my screen, which my photo editing program also picks up. It's such a small section, it becomes pixelated, but with the saturation boosted:



Definitely doesn't look like enamel.

 

I will bow to your knowledge on the subject of jewelry as mine knowledge would likely not fill a tablespoon.

 

The ones with the fire and bright colours are precious opals, but most opals are a single colour.

 

The colors can be in just a layer or the entire piece of opal.This is a 3.5 inch of stone with a layer of green and mostly white we found at the Spencer opal mine in Idaho.

 

Not familiar with Cathleen McLain jewelry. I just looked her up on Ebay, there are a number of pieces. Interesting! Can't comment on whether opals or not, they do have sort of a creamy look one associates with opals though. Maybe shine a bright light right on them and see if any glimmer of green, etc emerges.

Hope you do well on the auction with the other pieces Peggy.

 

... & here I thought that the fire was basically described an opal.

That is a really cool rock!! Did you dig it up or was it just "laying around"?

If you have access to Facebook, check out her page. No one has posted anything since 2025, but all of her photos of her pieces are still there & there are quite a few. She use to sell on Etsy.

I am so tempted to call just to get the final amount, but I am trying to be patient.

Thanks to everyone for all of the help!! Opals is how they will be described in the eBay listing.

 

There were piles of the mine rock and everyone there looked through the piles for opal, here is their website and there is a number of videos on YouTube.... https://www.spenceropalmines.com/

 

That is very cool!!

I laughed when I saw that you don't even have to travel to the mine. They will send you a bag full of possibilities or a bag with guaranteed success depending on if you want to pay $30 or $300.