Featured Age on this paste brooch?

Victorian? Older? Thanks.

 

It is a beauty, 19th century imo.

 

Ver' nicely made, Marko...a sweet Cross!

 

1880s? The pin stem is longer than the pin, so it has to be that old. Maybe even older.

 

I confess abysmal ignorance...What?

 

The brass pointy-stabby bit on the back. When that's longer than the pin is, it's an old pin. Some from the 1860s and 1870s are even longer.

 

The pin stem is longer than the width of the brooch (AKA pin) itself.

 

That is why we on this side of the Pond call the jewel itself a brooch, and the pointy-stabby bit the pin. It avoids confusion.

 

Thank you, Ladies, for the clarification...I get it, now!
It hadn't occurred to me that that detail was an indicator of era.

 

In jewellery, every little detail is a clue.

 

It's a beauty, I love it!!!!!

 

What we now see as an overlong pin stem occurs on brooches that predate the safety catch. A friend suggested to me that it could have been a safety measure to bury the exposed tip back into the fabric after closing the pin stem in a C clasp.

This one is on the short side to be used that way. On some brooches the pin stem is mounted in a way so that there is upward pressure when the pin is closed, pressing the stem into the clasp. Is yours like that? Everything about it says this is a high quality piece. I would put it to late 19th to turn of the 20th century.

I know you showed this in Finds, so perhaps info is there, but how big is this? I'm really wowed by the 'stones'.

 

I promise to measure it. It is small, probably the length of a quarter.