Ludovica, 1815

A small Edwardian thing, and a serious one. The old-cut diamonds is catching the light along one edge and nowhere else, the knife-edge galleries 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 the home counties, 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.