A RARE GOLD VICTORIAN CELTIC PENNANULAR BROOCH, c.1850s, t...

Hammer

€2,200

A RARE GOLD VICTORIAN CELTIC PENNANULAR BROOCH, c.1850s, the obverse applied with seed pearls and Celtic motifs, the reverse inscribed with Ogham symbols and Kitemark for 1849, in original fitted case, (18 grams). 5.8cm diameter This is a free copy of a ninth-century silver penannular ring-brooch with an Ogham inscription on the reverse, found near Virginia in Co.Cavan, and now in the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin (Fig. 97: D 11.1cm (ring); see Mahr & Raftery 1932, pl. 39:1).. Versions of this brooch were also registered by Waterhouse in 1849, when the original belonged to the Royal Dublin Society. Waterhouse called one version the ‘Ogham pin,’ owing to the Ogham inscription on the back, and a second the ‘Clarendon Shawl Brooch’, after the Countess of Clarendon, the Viceroy’s wife, who first patronised it. Waterhouse produced copies in silver and silver-gilt inlaid with Irish bog oak, ‘Irish diamonds’, Irish amethyst and malachite, and in gold with Irish pearls (Waterhouse & Co. 1852, p. 16). Both the Waterhouse and the Johnson copies have simplified the animal interlace and have left out the heads and other details of the animals on the original. Waterhouse exhibited their copies at the Great Exhibition in 1851 (Art Journal Illustrated Catalogue, 1851, p. 20), while Edmond Johnson, who took over the firm when his father, Joseph Johnson, died in 1870, was still exhibiting versions at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893 (see Description of the Reproductions of Antique Irish Art Metalwork Specially Manufactured by Edmond Johnson Dublin for exhibition at the World’s Fair Chicago 1893.) (Judy Rudoe)