Rosalind, 1869

A small Georgian thing, and a serious one. The foil-backed garnets are deepening to wine red under candlelight, the cannetille goldwork unmistakable. It is the kind of work that took a bench jeweller a full week, and it has survived a century without a loosened stone. It reached us out of a house in Turin, unworn for a lifetime and none the worse for it. Where it came from, such a piece is simply 'grandmother's' — to the rest of us, it is extraordinary.