Jewellery Discoveries From The '00s That Left Experts Speechless | Antiques Roadshow UK

Really, as much as that? That's amazing. I'll definitely take you out to dinner. Oh, my word. They were my mother-in-law's. And they were in the bank. And it wasn't until after her death 12 years ago that we discovered this jewellery in the bank. I'm going to start from the most recently made piece and then I'm going to go backwards. I'm going to start with this one here. Emerald and diamond brooch, that very geometric, rectangular look would date that to Art Deco. It's absolutely right for around about 1930. And during that time, you know, firms like Cartier and their contemporaries were making very, very linear-looking jewellery. But the emerald in the middle of this piece is a lovely dark blue-green colour and it's just the kind of colour that the market most looks for. Now, the earrings here, emerald and diamond earrings, are a totally different thing. They are in Victorian gold and silver settings where the stones themselves are individually mounted up in gold and they've got diamond frames where you've got these old Victorian cut diamonds probably around about the start of Victoria's reign, 1840, 1845. Now we move on... Look at that. They are super. Oh, wonderful. Emeralds in canateal gold settings. Canateal is a word that we use to describe this kind of very complex filigree scroll work. Now, if I can turn it over and have a look at the back of it, there's the canateal work and there, at the bottom, is a hook. And suspended from that hook might originally have been something like a larger cluster. The stones themselves are individually foiled and that's another thing to bear in mind. They've got this uniformity of bright grass green colour but we might find that if you were to remove one of those stones, it has a tin foil behind to enhance the colour. The actual necklace itself, we can date to round about the reign of William IV, that sort of period. So it's that early. I'm very taken with that. So, value. Now, the Art Deco brooch is wearable, top quality, platinum mounted. At auction, it would probably go up to round about £2,500 to £3,000. The earrings, emeralds and diamonds again, I'm noting the old cut of the diamonds but they are exquisitely commercial. One would be expecting them to make maybe £4,000 or £5,000. Moving on to the necklace, I think that if it was offered at auction, it would probably make about £8,000. Really? Yeah. So add those together, something approaching £15,000 to £20,000. I'm thrilled you bought them. Thanks very much indeed. Shall I tell you what I think it is? I think it's a snowflake. Oh, right. I think it's a snowflake brooch pendant and the beauty of it is to have this contrast of all the different rainbow colours of gems. Look at the diamonds, they form this nice flash in between each of the gems themselves but all the gems are different mixtures of semi-precious and precious gems in a snowflake cluster surround. Now, usually when they enclose the back of a gold brooch of this sort of period, you can see right the way through to the gems themselves. This is fully closed in at the back which actually is a little confusing because I think, looking at the stones at the front, that this is late Victorian. Usually when they enclose the whole back of the mount, that is usually Georgian but I don't think this is a Georgian brooch at all. I think this was made in about 1895. So it's a full range of colourful late Victorian gems in a frame of diamonds and the middle stone is a peridot. But it is individually numbered on the back there and that's good because it shows it's a quality piece made by a quality manufacturer. I think if it was being offered in a retail shop, it would probably sell today for £6,000 to £6,500. That's my feeling about it. It was left by an aunt of my husband's and we've no idea what it is at all. All these pieces here are little pieces of opal. It's a very good use of opal. The outside is actually rose diamonds, rose-cut diamonds. In fact, there's one missing there. It's set in a setting called middle grain. That's all these tiny little beads around the edges. You've got a little blister pearl at the bottom and an oriental pearl higher up on the chain. But it's so beautifully made. The annoying thing about it, of course... It hasn't got a maker? There's no maker's mark on it. So that colour is little slices of the opal? Little slices of opal. The opal in itself, the intrinsic value is very, very small, but it's such a nice piece. Have you got it insured at all? Not specially, no. I think you should. Not that you'd be able to replace it, but it would certainly hurt me if I lost it. Talking in terms of insurance values and so on, I think you've got to be looking at somewhere around about the £3,000 mark. Really, as much as that? It's a very unusual piece. The balance of this, for me, is perfect. I love the whole shape of it and I'm particularly fond of pendants, but is it something that you particularly look at and think, this is a very, very pretty piece? Yes, it's a beautiful piece. The shape of it's lovely and just the emerald drop is absolutely beautiful. And remembering that it was my mother-in-law's makes it very special. Yes. I mean, all the right sort of ingredients are there. You've mentioned what the principal stone is there. They're interesting, you know, because they're not always fantastic quality. No. The best of them come from Colombia and they are characterised by this very intense blue-green colour. Then they get very wishy-washy sometimes and they get so pale that, frankly, they look like very, very pale sort of marked glass. But the very best ones come from Colombia and it's got that intense blue-green colour. So, looking at the diamonds, we've got this, what you might call, a sort of stylised, parmette-shaped top to it. The diamonds themselves are set in individual little settings where you've almost got a cup that grips the diamonds in place. The front of it, incidentally, is all mounted up, as you might have thought, in this very white finishing platinum, but then when we turn it over, look at the back of it, we see that it's actually backed in yellow gold. I've never noticed that. Yeah, it's unusual that you see that sort of yellow mount. Now, that means we can date this probably to around about 1905. After then, the jewellery was more or less totally superseded by platinum, so it's quite an early piece for its period. On the platinum chain, let me just have a look at that. What an emerald. I mean, it really is a cracking stone. It's a really deep blue-green colour of an intensity and uniformity that is just what people look for. So, there's the ingredients. The value for something like this is far higher than you would expect to break the stones out for. With a lot of pieces of jewellery that are made maybe in the 1950s and 60s, they are described as what we call break-up. You look at the content of diamonds and think, well, the mount's not particularly beautiful, and all I would reckon of that is the break-up of the stones. No way on something like that. That is going to fetch a price based on its beauty and its wearability. I think if this was being sold in auction, it's going to make something in the region of £3,000, £3,500. It's lovely. It belongs to my daughter, so she will be very pleased. As you can see, they're all little signal flags set with different coloured gemstones, rubies, diamonds and sapphires. There are one or two other rubies there. These are probably tourmalines and citrines. Very prettily made. Each of these is a letter, a signal flag letter. They're engraved on the back and it spells remembrance, doesn't it? Yes. These were terribly popular around 1900 and were often made by a firm called Benzie and Cowes. So this probably was a present from a rather wealthy yacht owner to his wife or lady love. But you should insure this. You'll probably be surprised to know, for about £2,500. That's a lot of time. Yes, yes. Well, an incredible collection of jewellery. When did you start collecting all of these? Oh, about 35 years ago. And how many have you got all together? 700. And they're all brooches? Yes, 700 brooches. I've got bracelets. Do you wear any of them? Oh, yes, some of them. Which do you like to wear? I like that one there. That one, right. And that's a favourite of mine there. Brilliant. And what about these? What are those? Those are Mother's Day presents off my children. They're a bit sort of scratchy, aren't they? Do you know what they are? Yes. Aren't they rabbit's claws? No, no, they're grouse's claws. And they're to do with the shoot. The feet of the grouse that have been shot were then taken to the jewellery and mounted up. So it's real. Oh, definitely it's real. Very scratchy, aren't they? Ooh, yes. Not as scratchy as these. No, those are quite scratchy too, aren't they? Boy, oh, boy. And do you wear those all the time? Yes. It's a bit like armour, isn't it? Yes, it's... Yeah, I wear them all the time. And they're a bit sort of Chinese in a way, aren't they? They look like those sort of fingernail guards of Chinese emperors and things. Do they make you feel like an empress or not? No. They don't? No, I just feel different. What's the most different one here? Come on. Tell me about that one. Where did you find that? I got that off the internet. I go through the auction rooms. You do? And I put a bid in for about two quid and I won it. Isn't it wonderful? So that was a good buy. And I like it because it's a glass of champagne with bubbles coming out of it, which is, you know, part of being different again, isn't it? Yeah. The good party jewel. But it also makes a reference to jewellery that was going on at the time. This is a jewel that looks to me as if it might have been made in the 30s or 40s. And it's simulating baguette diamonds and brilliant diamonds. And it could, the original could have been made by... Well, indeed, it would have been, by Cartier or Boucheron or something like that. And had it been set with diamonds and been as imaginative as that, instead of being £2, it might have been £20,000. Oh, my God. I'll have to find a real one now. That would be very good. Well, I think you will in the end, because you're so determined, aren't you? Well, I've got so many. And that one, my daughter bought me that one. And I really like that one because, you know, I think the ones the kids buy are more... More touching, aren't they? Yeah, it's brilliant, isn't it? Brilliant colours. It's like a sort of pomegranate, isn't it? Fab. I nearly wore all 700 on this. All 700? You would have been clunking away like mad, wouldn't you? Well, as far as I know, it belonged to my great-grandmother, but I don't know anything more about it. She came from Yorkshire, and I suppose ladies of her status would have worn tiaras quite often and brooches like that. A typical form for a mid-19th-century piece of English diamond work, and technically it's interesting because on the back it's of gold and yet on the front it's set into silver and it was to be worn in candlelight and so there wasn't much concern about the front tarnishing, which it does a tiny bit. Have you worn it? Because it's got lots of memories for you, I bet it has. Possibly at army dances, but I don't go to those sort of things nowadays. As a brooch or in your hair? Oh, no, as a brooch. It's a wonderful, spectacular display of natural beauty, isn't it? And very flattering. Wonderful, wonderful thing. It's high Victorian. Yeah. It really couldn't be a more elegant form and perhaps put it down on your insurance policy for £8,000, something like that? More than you thought? Shall I tell you how much it's on my insurance for? Do, go on. 400. Well, it's only 20 times the amount. This is true. Do you remember Bransbury Williams? No. The Shakespearean actor? Oh, right, right, right. Yes, well, his sister left him. Oh, right, right, right. That's interesting. It is, fascinating. But I'm more fascinated by this because, first of all, you very seldom see an owl and people just love owls. Secondly, it is a really beautiful Victorian diamond owl, really sparkly, got little cat's eye eyes. What are those things in those eyes? They're cat's eyes. Oh. So, which is absolutely perfect. But it's just, it's beautifully made, the back is gorgeous, all lovely. But the thing is, it is, it's an owl with humour as well. Whoever designed this has really given it a, you know, the tilt of the body has given it a certain... Yeah, yeah. ...je ne sais quoi, which they usually don't have. Plus, it's a wonderful subject and, well, I love it. Do you have it insured, by any chance? Probably not. Oh, yeah, for 1,000, I think. 1,000? Yeah. Well, I would think that this really should be insured for something like 6,000. I'll definitely take you out to dinner. My goodness, what a wonderful, wonderful, colourful jewel to see. What do you know about it? Well, I know that it was most probably acquired by my grandparents. My grandfather was a well-known goldsmith and silversmith in the early part of this century. I think that's older. He obviously simply acquired it, I imagine, because he fell in love with it. Well, I can quite see why you would. And, well, it's a stunning example of Victorian jewellery at its absolute best, and it's a type of jewellery that's often called Holbeinesque. There was a fashion throughout England in the 1860s to emulate the Elizabethan age, and so this is a Holbeinesque jewel in every sense of the word. Even the use of the peridot in the centre is typical of Renaissance jewellery. The reason that we call it Holbeinesque is because it's loosely based on Holbeines' designs, which are held in the British Museum. But in a more precise way, it's based on a well-known jewel which is kept at Southside House, and there is a jewel called the Gresley jewel, which must have been famous in the 19th century because parts of the decorative devices are repeated in homage to that jewel. These stylised flower heads are on the Gresley jewel. Yes, this is enamel work, is it not? It is. It's called... It's again a Renaissance technique where the gold is engraved and then it's flooded with these very vivid colours, and it's something that one would expect to see on English Renaissance jewellery. At Southside House, the Gresley jewel contains miniatures by Hilliard, and it opens from the side to reveal portraits of Queen Elizabeth within. In the 19th-century homage to it, we find on the back Tudor roses. Yes, I see, yes. It's in vivid red and green Jean Lever enamel, and what a wonderful thing it is. It's in pristine condition. I think what's interesting to know about Howell & James is that it was a very famous firm. What date do you assume it was? Well, I have been told it was about 1870, and, again, the term Holbeinesque was applied to it, but any more than that, we knew nothing else. I don't know if it's even ever been worn. That may explain its pristine condition. Well, I think, in a way, that's what would appeal, certainly, to anybody these days, and the value is quite dizzy, I must say. I think if it came up at a specialist auction, one could expect to pay £8,000 for it, and if somebody was really greedy, perhaps £10,000 for such a dazzling example. Gosh, how nice to know. It's a pleasure. Thank you for looking at it. Wonderful. I think when you first look at this plaque, you think it's a piece of costume jewellery because of its shape and style. Is that something that you thought of? Well, I was 15 when I got it. It came in a rather untidy box just of bits and bobs from my auntie. I just liked it, so I kept it safe and occasionally wore it. I think it's good that you kept it safe because it does have a value and it's quite a piece that you could date quite precisely because of its design and style. Now, first of all, this material that looks a bit like a cloud formation or a snail shell, which you might think is just glass, is actually rock crystal. So it's a natural crystal form. This flash of colour in the centre is actually a line of fine Burmese rubies. And then the white stones on the borders of the rubies are, of course, lovely diamonds. So you've got a complete mixture of precious stones in a natural-looking hearthstone rock crystal border. Now, its shape is a bit peculiar because it doesn't look very much like... Well, would you wear it as a brooch? How would you wear it? And then you turn it round and the explanation is there because it is a lapel clip. You've probably seen that if you... Just there, above that little space, there is a word. Have you ever seen that word before? I've looked at it and it says Chaumet. Chaumet, exactly, because Chaumet were a firm of manufacturers making jewellery, particularly very fine pieces in the 1930s. And they used to make jewellery that had a tremendously pronounced style. Now, the firm itself actually goes back way into about 200 years old, something like that, and they were patronised by Napoleon and they go back a long way, and some of their jewellery makes a great deal of money. This clip, although it's a fairly modest piece, really, it's not got a big flash of diamonds, not big chunky stones, but because of its singularity, the fact that it's signed, Chaumet, and smothered all over the bottom of this clip are the little French control marks. So it's got all the right things there. What is the metal? Platinum. It's not white gold, it would be platinum. The Burmese rubies in the centre and the quality of the brilliance flanking the rubies themselves do make it quite valuable. So I think if it was sold in an auction, we're looking at something in the realms of £2,000 for it. It was a peace offering from my husband after a very disastrous dinner party in which one of the guests he'd invited didn't eat anything I had served, and I actually had to send out to the local pub for steak and kidney pie for him. Well, it's a very, very pretty thing. It's, as you know, opals, beautiful opals. Before about 1850, opals came from Czechoslovakia and they were horrible, dull little things, and in 1850 they started opening up the opal mines in Australia. And where opals get this lovely colour from, this lovely play of colour, is they're made of silica and water, and it's the water which actually makes the opal, because it's like an oil slick. You get this play, diffraction, between the different layers of the silica with the water in between. And that's sometimes why people think opals are unlucky, because they can dry out. So you don't really want to keep them in a very, very dry atmosphere. And did you manage to find out what your husband paid for it? No, I shouldn't think it was over the top, because I don't think it was that big an apology. Oh, really? Well, I think it was a pretty handsome apology, actually, because, for insurance purposes, I would value this necklace at somewhere between £5,000 and £6,000 today. What?! Do I have to apologise to him? Well, I definitely think so. Oh, good God. I just spotted that one, actually. Oh, this one. Oh, that was a birthday present. Oh, that's a pretty fabulous one as well. That, I think, was reasonably expensive. Yes, that looks like a few thousand pounds. Really?! Well, that's much more valuable, actually, because that's a black opal. Well, I think my husband paid about £1,500 for it. He's obviously got a good eye for these things. I think I should keep him. I'll have to employ him myself. Well, thank you for bringing him, anyway. That's really great. I don't believe it. My brother bought it for my mum from a jumble sale when he was young for 2p. Oh, 2p? Yes, 2 old d. So, tappers, with the old money. My mum said she wanted something nice, so my brother bought that. Well, clearly a flower brooch. Austrian. These flashy little white stones, they're diamonds. Fair enough. Turning it over, the back of the frame, white gold, rather beautifully set, like a claw, on each of these petals. Petals made out of frosted rock crystal. What are the most stone is? That's purple amethyst quartz. So, all real gems, white gold, tiny diamonds in a flash, Austrian, circa 1960, 1965. Go on. Value, if you were selling this in an auction today, £500? No way. Every way possible. Very, very pretty little brooch. Right. Thank you very much. It's actually made in England in 1840. This derives from a design conceived by Prince Albert. He asked for 12 bridesmaids' brooches to be made out of these materials for the Queen to hand out immediately after the wedding ceremony. It's absolutely loaded with amateur significance. This is a hand on which a lovebird has alighted. It's a lovebird made of turquoise. In the language of the lapidary, the turquoise stands for true love. It's an echo of the colour of the forget-me-not flower, and it means forget-me-not too. Also, you can see lurking here is a tiny little ruby eye for the lovebird. Again, in the language of the lapidary, this stands for passion, so we've got passionate true love. Also, we want that forever. Dream on, as they say. It's true in that the fingernails of the hand are actually diamonds, and diamonds are forever. This is forever passionate true love in a tiny jewel like this. What does it mean to you? I just love it. You wear it? I do wear it, yes. Have you got a clue about its meaning, its hidden meaning? No, I haven't really. In a way, that's good fun because I think the point about jewellery is that it does act on us subliminally. There's something very deep-seated in us, this understanding, and we don't have to think about it very carefully and hard, but I must say it's hugely animated. It really is very sculptural, and that's quite rare in jewellery. Usually it's very two-dimensional, and it is the liveliest composition I've seen of this type of jewellery. Intrinsic value is nothing, really, absolutely nothing. I mean, really no more than 80 to 100 pounds in the value of the stones, but in the value of the composition, 800 pounds. Goodness. I'll still wear it. Good. That's what it's for. Thank you very much. The light here shows us how very white these diamonds are because this is a diamond parure of jewellery. Parure, a set. Brooch and matching drops for the ears. The period of design for something like this is very much late 1940s, start of the 1950s, when London jewellers used to make jewellery like this, very white, using brilliant cuts, which are the round diamonds, and, in this case, baguette cut diamonds. And you know the way it is. Ladies would go to cocktail parties where they would wear their sets of jewellery. Sometimes with these drops for the ears, you could remove the diamonds, and I see you can, can't you? Yes, you can. You could wear them as simple cluster clips on the lobe during the daytime, and at night-time, you would put your baguette diamond drops on. Night-time, day-time earrings. Very, very practical indeed. You've got the additional facility on the brooch that you can remove it from the frame, like that. You pull back these clip fittings. I'll show you there. You just pull that like that. That dismantles, and then you can wear one on one side of your lapel and one on the other. Weren't they very fashionable in the 50s to wear clips? Very much so, and in the 30s too. Were they, yes. And you could imagine how striking that would look. Now, you've also brought in something that is utterly different from this. I mean, you couldn't get two pieces, three pieces that were so different in design. This is a totally aesthetic piece of jewellery, isn't it? It's very, very subtle. It's very delicate. Whereas this is all flash and show, this is far more gentle. Do you know about this? I'm assuming that they didn't come from the same place or at different times. I don't know. This belonged to my grandmother, that I do know, so it won't have come from the same place as this jewellery, and my grandmother gave me that when I was 21. The jeweller who's made this has actually managed to get a range of different coloured sapphires. These are blue ones, and here we've got some pink sapphires, and these are almost like moonstones, but they're actually like a liquid white coloured sapphire. And they're from Ceylon, I would think, and that's where you get all these different multi-coloured sapphires. And then you've got the frame which is all enamelled in bright green, very vibrant, so there is a sense of contrast between the stones and the frame. Yes. Now the key about this is you've got a little cartoon-shaped maker's mark at the top there. That maker's mark tells me that this is a piece of jewellery made by that very famous house who were working in the Victorian times called Giuliano. It is them. It is them. Did you have a suspicion that it might have been? I've never ever had anybody look at it before, but I hope that it might be. Well, I'm delighted to confirm that it is. It's not Carlo Giuliano the father, it's actually the sons, and they've got a slightly different mark there. And we can date this piece to about 1890. It's getting towards the end of the Victorian period. You've also got, just as an extra bonus, a matching chain to go with it as well, although I'm looking at that and that hasn't got a maker's mark on it. But this is absolutely right and correct and proper for the period by this maker. And it's colourful, it's delicate, it's wearable, and it's deeply commercial. Oh, thank you. Right, well let's talk about values. The diamond clip brooch, each side here has got about 6 carats of diamonds, that counts to about 12 carats of diamonds, so at basic break-up price for this diamond brooch, we would be looking at maybe £4,000 or £5,000. The earrings, to go with it, the fact it's a set adds a little boost to it as well, so I think those earrings are something around the £3,000 to £3,500 region. And then we move to this. Now, I would like to think that if this was being sold, the interest would be comprehensive and I think it's probably going to be worth something in the region of £6,000 for this as well. Yes. And that's the key name. Yes. Terrific. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you too. Thank you. Well this is a most wonderful Art Deco brooch. Tell me who it was made for. Well I think it's my mother's. I think it was a 21st birthday present for her in 1938. Oh, that's interesting. I've got a funny feeling it was made a little earlier than that, you know. There's various aspects of the design that point to it being just a tiny bit earlier than that, maybe 10 or 15 years. It seems to me a positive distillation of the Art Deco period, doesn't it? What parts of it did you think looked Art Deco particularly? Well, the oblong and the big diamond in the centre. Right. And funny enough, it's the sun rays that appear left and right that sort of interested me as a sort of Art Deco focus. And the strange conventionalised bunches of grapes. This is a sort of really a landscape, isn't it? And diamonds. It's an interesting one too because it's very spirited. It's a really great Art Deco jewel. But strangely, it's English and actually we associate the very best Art Deco jewels with France and so it's interesting for that too. I mean, I must say I do love it. My goodness, it's very enviable because it's exactly the right scale for everybody today. I think there's lots of people who wouldn't mind wearing that on a black suit and because it's so colourless too, it's exactly what people want. So all of those things do add up to something really very desirable indeed and with desirability comes value, doesn't it? Have you had any thoughts about it being what its value is? Well, I know its probate value of 1997 and that's all. It was 1,200 then. Yes. Well, it does seem to be very low, to be frank. I think this is a little work of art. It's the finest craftsmanship. It's also very, very beautiful diamonds. So I'm going to go a bit mad, I'm afraid. Are you ready? Yes. I'm going to tell you that it's worth £8,500. Oh my word! It's lovely. Crazy about it. Yes, yes. A pair of ruby and diamond cufflinks in the form of owl's heads. Tell me about them. Well, I didn't know they were ruby and diamond to start with. You didn't? No, I didn't. Well, that's a very, very good start then, isn't it? It is rather, yes. And we all want to know who they belong to. They belong to my husband and I bought them for him as a birthday present. Well, what a brilliant thing. So, gold and silver and rubies and diamonds. And I guess they date from about 1910, something like that. How much were they when you bought them? I can't remember exactly, but I'm a generous wife, but not over the top. About £300, I think. £300. Well, everybody would want these, I think. They look fantastic on a cuff. They're not too noisy, and they're not insignificant and very desirable, and I'm going to value them at £1,250. I think I deserve brownie points for years. You do. Now, when you were given this, did you think it was a brooch? Yes, I did. I only ever saw my grandmother wear it as a brooch, so I didn't think it would be anything else. And, of course, it's got the pin across the back. Yeah. Well, also at the back, there's a little clue to the fact that it was to be worn in another way. Right. Have you ever unscrewed this or not? Oh, no. And there it falls away. Oh! And that's the key to another function, to this very, very pretty jewel. It looks almost freer without it, doesn't it? Yes. And in the fitted box in which this was originally sold, there would be a long tortoiseshell cone. Yes. And it could be screwed into the back there, and in the same box, too, would be some enormously long white feathers called egrets feathers. Egrets. Oh, yes. So you'd be the belle of the ball, before you were married, you'd be wearing it in your hair, like this. Oh, really? Yeah. And it would have huge white feathers jutting out of the top, and you'd be the belle of the ball, wearing your egret. Oh, wow. The word egret is a corruption of the word egret, because the feathers came from the egret, the white egret. Yes. Very spiky, very sort of shaving, brushy looking feathers. Yes. And very, very elegant. This was what a girl would wear before she was married in her hair, before she was entitled to wear a tiara. Only married women can wear tiaras in their hair. Right. And this would be part of etiquette. In what date do you think? Come on. I honestly have no idea. Have a go. It was my grandmother's, and I believe that she inherited it, but other than that, I wouldn't have an idea. No, well, we're pushing it a little bit further back. We're pushing it back to the 1890s, probably 1870s to 1890s. Wow. And it's hugely versatile. I mean, it has lost its feathers. They perished long, long ago. In fact, most of the egrets perished. They were a threatened species because they were hunted to nearly extinction to get these wonderful, wonderful feathers. That's gone. The velvet case is gone, in which this would fit snugly. The tortoiseshell comb is gone. Well, it's a positive blaze of diamonds, isn't it? I mean, it's a wonderful, wonderful thing. It's a bit sparkly. You can see along the bottom here what we call a gallery, which just raises the diamond work up when it's worn as a brooch, away from the material to let the light come through. Pierced by hand, drawn out with a little diamond work, and then filed away by an apprentice. Then the silver settings are let into this, in tubes of silver, and each diamond set into it, pushed round, rubbed round, and then cut down. We call them cut-down settings. So it's a hugely sentimental one for you, really, isn't it? Oh, yes, yes. It's something that'll be passed on to my daughter, and hopefully on to hers. Well, that's wonderful. But I think we've got to just try and make a stab at value. I think, um, let's put it down at £3,000 for insurance. Goodness me. That'll give my husband a shock. Well, it's the right sort of shock, isn't it? All you've got to do is look after it, and all you've got to do is wear it for him, really. Yes. You look very posh indeed. Lucky chap. One story we haven't heard is the one about Harrogate and the Russian royal family jewels. Princess Alex of Hesse, when she was engaged to the Tsarovich of Russia, came to Harrogate for treatment for sciatica. And while she was here, staying in a boarding house, the landlady gave birth to twins. The Tsarina, the future Tsarina, took this as a good luck omen, and insisted that she be godmother to those twins. And she gave a number of gifts at the christening, the cufflinks and the nappy pin that she bought here in Harrogate. And then, when she returned to Russia, she sent gifts to the family. Subsequently, up until the 21st birthday in 1915, when she sent this beautiful gold cross to the male twin. Shortly after that, of course, the gifts stopped. Sadly, yes. The Russian family came to a very unpleasant end, and that was the end of that story. But the beginning of our story, because the son of the male twin came to Harrogate in 1993. He had no family, and he wanted these items to be where they would be appreciated, and where they had meaning. And, of course, here in the Royal Pumphrey Museum in Harrogate, they have tremendous meaning. So they've really come home. Yes, they have. They've come home, and they tell a very Harrogate story of Plummer's son being christened, Butcher's son being his godfather, and the future Tsarina of Russia standing as godmother. Sums up the essence of Harrogate in its spa heyday. As soon as I saw this box, which was lurking in the bottom of your handbag, it said something very specific to me. I realised it must have done. I couldn't believe you'd spotted it so quickly. Well, the reason is that it's made of hollywood, and it's a type of wood much favoured by a very famous Russian jeweller. Have you any idea who made this charming little brooch? Well, when we first found it among my mother's effects, my daughter was looking at it, and she said, That's Russian. I'm sure it says Fabergé. I thought, I can't believe that, because I've no idea where it could have come from in our family. No. And she was absolutely bang on, because in the case of satin, and satin it is, it's the most luxurious object. I mean, the case is just as beautiful in a strange way as the object in it. This is pure silk at the top, and it says, K. Fabergé, St. Petersburg, Moscow and Odessa. And it's an absolute bullseye. It's in perfect condition. The only thing that's a problem with it is that the pin has broken off, and that can be restored quite easily. And as you can see very plainly, it's in the form of a tiny little heart surrounded by diamonds. Yes. The stone in the middle, have you thought about the stone at all? Not really. It's one I don't recognise at all. It's a faint green. It is a faint green. I think it's a zircon. It's got a very high refractive index. It flashes rather wondrously, and I think it's a green zircon. But the point about this jewel really is not anything to do with intrinsic value, because I have to say you know, the material of it is fantastically modest. It's a green zircon, really very low value indeed. The diamonds surrounding it are very low value, and the gold is of course completely negligible. But it's heightened with a little flash of yellow enamel, isn't it? It's very artistic. And if you look under the yellow enamel, you'll see that you're seeing through the translucent enamel onto an engraved ground, a sort of flecked ground there. I hadn't really seen it that close. Not even when your daughter read Fabergé. You had a closer look then. I don't think I really believed it. No, you didn't believe it. Well, you've got to now, I'm afraid, because it jolly well is. I mean, it's really an extraordinarily wonderful find, really. See that funny little hallmark there? It stands quite simply for Carl Fabergé, and then 56, which is the gold standard. Running down the back of it is a series of numbers, which actually you could live with it a whole lifetime and never see. This is engraved with a little steel point, and it gives a sequence of numbers which refer to stock books. I've actually had the time to look at the London stock books and check whether this jewel was in there. Maddeningly, it isn't. If it had been in there, we would have known exactly how much was paid for it, when it was bought, and by whom it was bought. I think it's highly likely to have been sold in London. I can date it between 1903 and 1915, from the lid sat in. It says Odessa here. That branch didn't open until 1903. It's rather like an archaeological site. There's lots of pools on it, tiny, tiny brooch, and you think, well, what's all the fuss about? This is, of course, a heart on a bar, and it probably meant love on some level or another. It's a most lovely, lovely find. I find it very touching, actually. This is a souvenir of Russia that's long gone by. When it was bought, it wouldn't have been a cheap object in any way, having said that it's worth next to nothing intrinsically. Fabergé was not a shop where you expected to buy things inexpensively. It was a shop for an Edwardian elite, really, with enormous spending power. I mean, luminous amounts of money, which we can really have no contemplation of either. And this was a little toy, just taken off a shelf for the very specific meaning. It would have cost, perhaps, something like £30 or £40. Today, I think it might be worth £8,000. And a week at the knees, good gracious! My wife had it for, I don't know, five, six years. It's probably come down through the family. She was quite happily wearing it as a bit of costume jewellery. A bit of costume jewellery? Yeah. And what did she wear it on? Denim jackets. Denim jackets. Anything that she thought, a nice sparkly thing. And then we took it to a jeweller's in Chancery Lane to get the clasp sort of repaired a little bit. And he turned around and said, you do realise it's the real thing? The real thing. And so she's not worn it since, more's the pity. Diamonds and denim. Yes, exactly. She really thought a bit about the design. I did notice that the two ends unscrewed, but that was... Well, they unscrewed because there was probably not only this brooch, but a cascade of them running the front of a lady's fiercely corseted dress in about 1900. So you think your wife had problems. Think of Princess Yusupova walking around with this. Not bad, is it? No, not bad at all. Not bad. Now, I say Princess Yusupova because I can tell that this is a Russian brooch by the safety clasp. There's a strange little sort of twist, like a question mark at the end, which is a brilliant device because it stops the owner pricking her finger. Or more accurately, her lady's maid pricking her finger because you never put this sort of thing on yourself in pre-revolutionary Russia. What we call a stomacher because it runs along the front of the stomach of such a lady. I can't think how it could have been more beautiful. Right, what's the look? Just underneath here, there's a break in the design which I think is where the second and third and I don't know how many more brooches went down to meet it. A tiny little groove here and also observe the beauty of this gallery here, the Pierce Gallery and the fact that the back of the brooch is made of gold and yet the front is of platinum to give the whiteness of the effect. I think it's probably quite a late brooch. It's 20th century. The Russians, it's curiously sort of feudal life they were living there and in the early 20th century, things couldn't be more sumptuous and more bejeweled and more exotic really. So this is a fantastic context really, isn't it? I'm just going to look a little bit for hallmarks. Russian hallmarks almost always appear on the clasp of the jewel and along the pin which is strange and yet there are more here and it's jolly good that I did check that actually because there are the initials of the maker there, Theodore Laurier, who is a very well-known Art Nouveau jeweler making things in the manner of Lalique serpents and butterflies and that sort of thing. So this is a slightly conventional one for him but a very beautiful one. Now what did the jewelers have to say about it? They must have admired it very much I think, didn't they? Well they did, yes. They said it was a lovely piece and he even turned around and said, I'll give you 5,000 scrap for it. I said, no! I said, no, I don't think so. No, no, I think scrapping it is not the right word. We've gone beyond scrap. No, it's too beautiful to break down. Fabulous context. Well, you know, if he's going to offer you 5,000 pounds scrap for it, double it up for insurance. Well they were given to my great-grandfather who was chef to Edward VII and Queen Victoria at the end of her reign by the crown heads of Europe and some of these are the Russian pieces. Amazing. Now do you think they were objects given almost as a sort of thank you to this? That's right, yes. And is this all the things that you have? Are there any more? No, I have some other pieces that come from Manuel of Portugal, Kaiser Bill. All the visitors to Sandringham, all the visitors to Buckingham Palace, all the cousins of the British royal family that descended from Queen Victoria. In a sense she's a fountainhead of this sort of European royal society. Let's have a look at those. These are Russian ones and a pair of gold cufflinks with rubies and diamonds, alternating rubies and diamonds and a sort of nugget effect. Nugget, that's what I've always been told, yes. Gold nuggets. And there's a most marvellous word in Russia used to describe this, which is called zamrodok, which means a nugget. And it's a very, very Russian technique, much favoured by Fabergé. And in fact these are not by Fabergé and the lid satin rather conveniently tells us that they're made by somebody called Ivanov, working in St Petersburg. And it's certain that they are a gift from a member of the imperial family because the imperial family cipher appears above. Yes. And do you know exactly who gave those? I think it was Tsar Nicholas. He certainly came to London and he certainly went to Sandringham and there were many opportunities in which he could have offered those. Tell me about what you know about him as a chef. Why was he so favoured do you think? Well he was a Frenchman to start with and I understand he had been chef to people like the Rothschilds and had been to Salt Room in Devon and Edward VII heard of him and wanted him to be his chef and I think he may have pitched him. What did he look like? Do we know what he looked like? Yes, I have a picture here. Oh, isn't it marvellous? Of his family. With mother, with his wife and the two daughters, my grandmother and my aunt. That's very touching, isn't it? My goodness. He looks quite sort of... A vuncular. Well, doesn't he? He's a brilliant chap, I must say. And so these were his things. Well, let's just run through them a little bit further. Have you thought about these ones here? Well, I have been told that they were cufflinks but they have little rings on as you can see just there and I really don't know. I imagine because they were given to my great grandfather they must have been cufflinks I feel and because he only had daughters possibly the daughters had them made into brooches or pendants. I think what has happened and rather sadly is that when these adaptations have been made to turn them into brooches that the marks have been lost but these are very characteristic of Fabergé's work. We call this guilloché enamel and it's an engine turned gold mount that's flooded with translucent pink enamel and then the imperial eagle is applied as a gold cypher over and above that and in every way they are possibly reek of Fabergé but in stamp collecting terms I can't be absolutely certain but I can be certain about this one and does the family history say that that was an imperial gift? They do. They do say. The family told me that that was definitely given by Tsar Nicholas. Well I don't think there's any doubt about that at all and there's absolutely no doubt at all that this is a full-blown Fabergé brooch. It is. It's signed. Because I wondered and I sort of half hoped it would be and that's marvellous. Well it's a most distinguished thing. Again the use of the guilloché enamel yellow enamel in this case and two colours of gold, little laurel wreaths and tied with a diamond bow emblematic of peace and the Romanov crown set with diamonds and circled with pearls and we know it's Fabergé because on the back here there's the workmaster's initials for August Holming who was not necessarily a specialist jeweller but a worker in all manner of enamel work. So goodness me and there's more at home. There's more souvenirs. Yes, well a few more. Now as for value the cufflinks are impressive they're very Russian, very Russian technique in the manner of Fabergé but a rose by any other name smells as sweet but it certainly isn't as valuable. And I think with an imperial provenance nonetheless they are very desirable, very wearable and a very precise provenance so I suppose something like £7,000 or £8,000 for the cufflinks. Really? My goodness gracious me. Nothing to do with intrinsic value. Nothing at all. These I believe them to be Fabergé from a technical basis really and as souvenirs of Nicholas II which is absolutely certain, I think we can go a bit mad again. £8,000 to £10,000 for those. Laughter Are you feeling calm? She's very, very good isn't she? Making me nervous. These are things that I don't really want to sell you see. No. I want to keep and they're, yes because they're family pieces. Well I think in a way they should be kept together as a collection. Should they? That's what I wanted to ask you. Contexts everything here in provenance actually. And what about this one? Any ideas for that one? Well if these are that price that must be £10,000. Well it is £10,000 and it's more than £10,000. Is it? It's £15,000. Laughter My dear chap. It's wonderful. That's amazing. I never realised it would be as much as that I must confess. Yeah.