Flora Steel, an art historian, purchased a silver brooch over thirty years ago at an antique fair in the English Midlands for around 20 pounds, equivalent to about $35 at that time. After wearing it on the lapel of one of her favorite coats for a few years, she stored it away in a closet, where it remained untouched for two decades.
Last year, while scrolling through YouTube on her phone, Ms. Steel came across a 2011 BBC story about a brooch featured on the show “Antiques Roadshow.” The presenter, Geoffrey Munn, displayed sketches of other brooches designed by the same Victorian-era architect and artist.
Upon seeing the sketches, Ms. Steel exclaimed, “Heavens, that’s mine!”
Mr. Munn expressed his dream of discovering brooches designed by the artist, William Burges, referring to his jewelry as the “almost-holy grail of Victorian 19th-century design.”
On Tuesday, Ms. Steel’s brooch was sold for £9,500 (approximately $12,000) to a private collector at Gildings Auctioneers in Market Harborough, England. The brooch is crafted from silver, lapis lazuli, malachite, and pink coral.
“It caught my eye for its incredible design – its beautiful use of stones,” mentioned Ms. Steel, who has been collecting silver jewelry since she was 13 years old.
Ms. Steel became the third person to auction off a William Burges brooch through Gildings; the other two individuals also discovered the value of their brooches after watching “Antiques Roadshow.” One of the brooches fetched £31,000 in 2011 (around $50,000 at that time).
Burges, renowned for designing Cardiff Castle in Wales, created the brooches for the weddings of two friends in 1864, as per Gildings, referencing annotations on the original sketches stored at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Ms. Steel’s brooch, featuring a Victorian Gothic aesthetic, bears the initials “JCG,” representing the Rev. John Gibson, a cleric-scholar, and Caroline Bendyshe, a great-niece of Admiral Lord Nelson.
“If those sketches hadn’t survived, the connection with the designer would have been lost to history,” stated Will Gilding, a director at Gildings.
Ms. Steel, originally from Britain but residing in Rome, expressed her joy in realizing that she owned a valuable, long-lost brooch, which brought her much-needed happiness after battling breast cancer for two years.
Following successful treatment, she plans to donate a portion of the proceeds to breast cancer research, share some with her son, and set aside funds for a horseback riding trip in Tuscany, Italy, and a visit to the San Carlo opera house in Naples.
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