In the chapter titled ‘Modern Jewellery’ in her taste-making book, The Art of Beauty (1878), English writer Mary Eliza Haweis references the “artistic appreciation of good forms and good work” she found at Messrs Phillips of Cockspur Street.
“The most perfect models are sought for the ornaments they furnish. Museums and picture galleries are ransacked for devices of necklaces, earrings and pendants. I there observed an elegant cross copied from a picture by Quentin Massys in the National Gallery,” she writes.
It could be that the design to which Haweis refers is a pendant sold by Bonhams Bond Street (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) as part of the whiteglove Glyn Cywarch contents sale on March 29.