[Sold via Kentshire.com, no longer viewable. Nothing further known.]
Materials: Egyptian Faience
Egyptian faience is a sintered-quartz ceramic displaying surface vitrification which creates a bright lustre of various blue-green colours. Having not been made from clay, it is often not classed as pottery. It is called "Egyptian faience" to distinguish it from faience, the tin-glazed pottery associated with Faenza in northern Italy. Egyptian faience, both locally produced and exported from Egypt, occurred widely in the ancient world and is well known from Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean and in northern Europe as far away as Scotland. Read more.
Egyptian Revival Scarab Brooch
An Egyptian Revival Gold and Scarab Brooch
[nothing further known, no source?]
Egyptian-Revival Faience and Jeweled Brooch
Magnificent and Rare Egyptian-Revival Faience and Jeweled Brooch, Cartier, London
Designed as an Egyptian fan, or flabellum, centering an ancient green glazed faience bust of the goddess Sekhmet, depicted with a solar disc and a uraeus (cobra) upon her head, set against a lapis lazuli sky twinkling with diamond stars bordered by a black enamel aureole and repeating diamond-set stylized lotus motif, all surmounting a stylized lotus blossom; set in platinum and 18 karat gold with a total of 11 single-cut and 89 old European-cut diamonds; the back of the brooch fitted with an 18 karat gold crook, a symbol of state power in Egypt when held by the pharaohs in conjunction with a flail, placed as the connecting support element for the faience relic, signed Cartier Londres, numbered S.L 7353; circa 1923. With original fitted box stamped Cartier.
Exhibited
French Industrial Exposition, Grand Central Palace, New York, New York, April 22-May 3, 1924.
Literature
The Illustrated London News, January 26, 1924, “The ‘Tutankhamen’ Influence in Modern Jewelry,” which includes this brooch and indicates the range of pieces incorporating ancient fragments produced by Cartier London in the year and a half since the opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb in November 1922.Cartier: 1900-1939 by Judy Rudoe, pages 136-138.
The Impossible Collection: The 100 Most Important Jewels of the Twentieth Century by Vivienne Becker, plate 20.
Catalogue Note
Deriving her name from the ancient Egyptian word ‘sekhem,’ or ‘powerful one,’ Sekhmet was depicted as a lioness. A solar deity, said to be the daughter of the sun god Ra, she was the warrior goddess and the goddess of healing for Upper Egypt, the protector of the pharaohs, and it was believed that her breath created the desert.This is one of two brooches depicting the top of an Egyptian fan that were made by Cartier London in 1923. The other was sold at Sotheby’s New York Magnificent Jewels auction on December 4, 2007, lot 273.
