Joanne sent me a lovely photo of a small, two and a half inch 18-karat gold and enameled mandolin brooch. She said her Aunt Kigi gave her the pin. Aunt Kigi, a heck of a lady, Joanne said, either received this expensive piece of jewelry from a young interested gentleman or one of her husbands. Any one of many wealthy gents….
The brooch sits in a box marked “Le Must de Cartier, Paris.” The red and gold tooled leather shows a trademark of Cartier. On the back of the neck of the tiny mandolin I see a cursive letter T and a number 750. I attempted to find out if Cartier made a mandolin like this, and if so, what the maker’s marks looked like. Plus how they wrote the caratage, “750” or the more anglicized “18k.”
Mandolin Brooch Symbolism
The mandolin is an antique musical instrument, and a solo instrument. Many oil paintings through the years pictured a mandolin player serenading a young lady. Therefore, such an ancient instrument symbolizes harmony in love, symbolism derived from the Renaissance. The symbolism of this may not have been lost on Aunt Kigi since she sounds like she knew her way around romance.
Some of the most accomplished jewelers of the early 20th century experimented with the form of musical instruments. I searched for Cartier’s attempts at tiny jeweled instruments and didn’t find such a brooch. So I looked into the design number on the red box (C914) and discovered that the “C” line didn’t even encompass brooches. Further, the trademark “Le Must de Cartier” dates from 1972, when a group of investors bought the family-run Cartier (since 1847). They opened a new, more modern-looking line “the Must-haves.” The autobiographical red leather book Le Must de Cartier, published in 2003, states the early years of Le Must “were a time when it was in good taste to trample underfoot the values of yesterday ….” But “luxury was not dead! It needed to be reinvented … Cartier justified luxury by offering a more perfect modernity.”
The look of Joanne’s brooch harkens back to a tradition began on Greek vase paintings with Apollo and his lute. Add to this that I didn’t find Cartier maker’s stamp, and no “eagle” hallmark, the French hallmark for 18 karat or 750 gold. By the way, 750 means the brooch is 750 percent gold out of a total of 1,000 percent. The other 250 percent conatins various other strengthening metals. I suspect Aunt Kigi put this brooch into one of the many Cartier boxes lying around.
Like a Read Mandolin
But this in no way takes away from the rare beauty’s value. The quality is evident in the workmanship. The strings separately strung, and the tailpiece of the mandolin brooch white gold set with diamonds, hinged, like a real instrument. The headstock contains eight individual tuning pegs, just as in a real mandolin. The fingerboard black, ebonized. Around the sound hole we see a black and gold chased (incised) leaf design, and solid 18-karat gold creates a chased pick guard. The back of the mandolin brooch enameled in alternate colors in the Italian style of Italian mandolins. And the proportions made realistically accurate.
I believe this exquisite piece dates from the first quarter of the 20th century and may have been custom made for Aunt Kigi, as I didn’t find one like it. The closest comparable piece weighs in at $8,000. Well done, Aunt Kigi!