Featured Art Nouveau looking brass brooch but is it more modern? Czech?

Hi all! I'm hoping you can help me with an age for this brass brooch and any other info you may have. It looks like Czech brass to me. It is a little Art Nouveau in style. Is it a slightly older safety clasp or more modern? Also, the back looks a bit odd, is it missing a back plate perhaps? My immediate thought was 1930s or 40s but would love your opinion. Thank you!!

 

looks to me like someone made a brooch , out of something else..!

 

Interesting, I like your theory!

 

I agree the edges of the back pin piece look pretty crude, but, what else could the front piece have been??? Unless, somehow the back of the brooch had fallen off and someone 'improvised'........ The front is very pretty!!!!

 

I know the back of some Czech pieces are not always finished particularly well as the front part was seen as the important part. I had wondered though if a backplate of some sort maybe slid on to the back ridgey bits

 

I'm also thinking those flowers orientation should be from top to bottom..

 

I think that's a belt segment.

 

Ditto. But it works as a brooch.
I am not seeing Czech. I think US made.
Beautiful, balanced design, with a certain 'heaviness'. I don't mean that in a bad way, but it is something I often see in US Art Nouveau pieces.

 

Ditto .Ditto. Looks like it was a belt buckle in a former life.

 

Thanks everyone! I would never have guessed a belt buckle at one point in it's life! So it seems older buckle turned into a brooch later on, have I got that right?

 

Either older, or maybe surplus.