LATE GEORGIAN PINK TOPAZ AND TURQUOISE CROSS, CIRCA 1830

Late Georgian pendant of stylized cruciform design, centered with a cushion-shaped pink topaz in a cut-down closed-back collet setting, the radiating points similarly set with elongated oval-shaped pink topaz, terminating in trefoil turquoise-set accents, framed by an elaborate openwork cannetille and grainti surround, suspended from a pendant surmount of similar design, tested 22 karat gold, circa 1830.

Why we are obsessed:

In the 1820s and 1830s, the Gothic Revival and Grand Tour travel created a strong appetite for historicist jewellery, late Georgian goldsmiths rarely copied ancient artifacts line for line instead they took an inventive approach, and this cross seems to pull it's silhouette from two specific traditions; the radiating, eight-pointed architecture of a Crusader starburst and the trefoil-tipped arms of a Coptic cross.

For buyers of the era, this pairing tapped into two major cultural movements, Sir Walter Scott’s 1819 bestseller Ivanhoe which ignited a European obsession with medieval knights and chivalric lore. At the same time, travel beyond Italy into Egypt and the Levant was surging, especially after the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone in 1822, making early Near Eastern Christian antiquities newly fashionable.