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Auction: 26052 - Jewellery & Objets de Vertu
Lot: 65

A LATE 19TH/EARLY 20TH CENTURY STICK PIN, WITH THE PRINCE OF WALES'S FEATHERS
The head designed as the Prince of Wales's feathers beneath a crown, above a blue enamel ribbon with the motto 'ICH DIEN', set with diamonds and small red and green cabochons.
In silver-topped gold
Unmarked
Accompanied by a black box with red silk and velvet interior.
Size/dimensions: 6.10cm long
Gross weight: 3.69g


All small round brilliants, cabochons and enamel remain present, secure and in very good condition. There is some roughness to the pin but would not affect wear.

Three ostrich feathers within a coronet, with the motto Ich Dien (“I serve”), form the badge of the heir apparent, traditionally associated with Edward the Black Prince in the fourteenth century. A pin of this period would have been associated with Albert Edward, Prince of Wales from 1841 until he became Edward VII in 1901, or with his son George, Prince of Wales from 1901 to 1910.



Between the mid-nineteenth century and the First World War, the stick pin was an essential accessory for any well-dressed man, worn to secure and ornament the folds of a cravat or tie. It was also one of the most personal gifts a sovereign or royal household could bestow. Pins set with a crowned cypher or monogram were given as tokens of favour and remembrance to courtiers, officials, household staff, visiting dignitaries, and the guests and companions of royal shooting parties, regattas and state visits. Small enough to be given freely, yet unmistakably royal, they carried their recipient's connection to the court wherever they were worn.



Reading these jewels is part of their appeal. The initials are often intertwined or mirrored so that they read in either direction, sometimes with a regnal numeral, and the form of the crown above signals rank: imperial and royal crowns, the archducal crown of the Habsburgs, and the strawberry-leaved coronet of a duke. Many pins survive in the cases of the court jewellers who supplied them, and the cases in this section form a small directory of royal patronage, from Sy & Wagner, Court Goldsmiths in Berlin, and V. Mayer's Söhne, Imperial and Royal Court Jewellers in Vienna, to E. & R. Altenloh, purveyors to the King and Queen of the Belgians, and Benzie of Cowes, the yachtsmen's jeweller.



The families represented here, among them Hanover, Denmark, Belgium, Bavaria, Saxony, Prussia and Habsburg Austria, were closely bound together by marriage, and pins such as these passed freely between their courts. Within a few years, many of these monarchies had gone. The war that began with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 ended in 1918 with the fall of the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires, and the crowned cyphers on these small gold jewels belong to a world that vanished almost overnight.

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Estimate
£500 to £700

Starting price
£400