Victorian Name Brooch

I just bought an old Victorian name brooch! I've had my eye out for one for a while now, lo and behold, I found one with my name on it.

The Victorians and Edwardians loved these brooches. It's original use was to label the staff of large estates. These pins went on to become popularly used as sweetheart brooches and tokens of love. They became machine manufactured, thus making them affordable and rather common.

The sentiment and personalization is what makes them so charming. Most of the name brooches I have seen have been made in silver or Whitby jet, always adorned with beautiful flourishing engravings, flowers, hearts, clovers and so on.

The names on the brooches are very 'of the time', lucky for me 'Carrie' was a rather popular name in the last half of the 19th century. Most of the names I have come across are 'Agnes', 'Nellie', 'Polly', 'Minnie', 'Flora' ect.

The picture above I used from Wee Birdy London. The other picture is of my own recently purchased find.