Hi there and thank you so much for stopping by my auction. Up for your consideration are these beautiful Georgian pinchbeck and topaz paste earrings. I bought them from a dealer during one of my travels and she told me they were from the 1790's. The earwires are a replacement and are 14k gold. There are some scratches, wear and tarnish to the pinchbeck metal and there some scratches and nicks to the paste but these 'character marks' do not take away from the beauty of these earrings - they really looks stunning on the ear.
from Wikipedia: Pinchbeck is a form of brass , an alloy of copper and zinc , mixed in proportions so that it closely resembles gold in appearance. It was invented in the 18th century by Christopher Pinchbeck , a London clockmaker. Since gold was only sold in 18-carat quality at that time, the development of pinchbeck allowed ordinary people to buy gold 'effect' jewellery on a budget. The inventor allegedly made pinchbeck jewellery clearly labelled as such. Pinchbeck jewellery was used in places like stagecoaches where there was a risk of theft . Later dishonest jewellers passed pinchbeck off as gold; over the years it came to mean a cheap and tawdry imitation of gold. [1]
Pinchbeck is typically composed of copper and zinc in ratios of 89% copper to 11% zinc; or 93% copper to 7% zinc
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