I Fooled Around and Fell in Love 18-Carat Gold, Diamond, and Hand-Painted Porcelain Pendant

You may not have been looking for her, but here she is!  Isn't that what they say about falling in love?

This extraordinary antique pendant was made in the 1870's of 18-carat yellow gold in a pointed heart form, the edges dressed with hand-applied gold granulation beads, each one placed individually by a Parisian goldsmith in the 1870s. This was the height of the Etruscan Revival, when the great French jewellery houses were raiding the ancient world for inspiration and producing pieces of almost impossible refinement. Twin volute scrolls crown the top. A single baroque pearl sits at the pointed base, soft and luminous amongst all that gold.

Gazing out from her heart of gold, diamonds sparkling in her hair, is a portrait of a woman painted on porcelain in the Orientalist tradition, that great 19th-century love affair with the exotic, the mysterious, the other.  She has been captivating people for a hundred and fifty years and counting.