Victorian Pique Heart Locket

Our stunning Victorian Pique Heart Locket Pendant with ss chain would be a marvellous locket to add to your collection, come and view it in store today!

Lockets have accrued both utilitarian and aesthetic value over the centuries. Whether carrying a droplet of perfume, locks of hair or even poison, you will be surprised to know that for much of locket’s history, they weren’t always jewels of amorous devotion

Queen Victoria was known to always wear a locket of Prince Albert around her neck, especially after he passed away. And, the Queen was gifted a locket charm bracelet, with eight lockets all with individual portraits of her children.

Like most jewels of the time, antique Victorian Lockets followed the fashions of the royal family, firmly cementing the locket as a must-have item in the 19th century and beyond.

Wealthy families would commission antique four picture lockets, also known as family lockets, which would neatly open up to reveal multiple frames. These lockets could take the form of books or orbs, with the more expensive kinds bedecked in engravings.

Piqué work was a type of decorative work made by inlaying tiny points or pins of gold or other precious metals (Sometimes mother-of-pearl) in patterns or pictures on tortoiseshell. Sometimes Ivory was used.  Small metal pieces fill in an engraved design such as floral or scenic.

The technique originated in the mid 1600s in Italy and France as decorative objects like boxes it spread to jewellery in the 19th century and reaching its peak in popularity during the Victorian period. This form of jewellery making is now a lost art and cannot be reproduced today and is so unique and spectacular