Brooch, ferrotype photograph mounted in gold, decorated with marcasite and a mirrored disc, designed and made by Bettina Speckner, Germany, 2000

Rectangular ferrotype plate with its corners cut, set on a slightly larger gold backplate of the same shape. The image is of a young woman in a long pale dress, flounced at the hem and with a knee-length overskirt or apron with jagged, scalloped edge. Her earrings and wedding ring have been touched in with gold paint. Around her head, like an oversize halo, are mounted two curving grey metal panels set with marcasite elements - either a rose with foliage on each side or a lozenge shape made of six circles. These appear to have once been part of a necklace with an open circle at either end to which one or two links of gold chain have been attached. Over the woman's chest a mirrored disc is attached by three pins which go through the ferrotype and the gold, joining on the reverse to hold it in place. The back is unpolished and has a simple repeating motif of a flower made from a cluster of six dots.

The Louise Klapisch Collection, given by Suzanne Selvi

Bettina Speckner is known for her distinctive transformation of nineteenth-century photographic portraits into intriguing collage brooches. Paul Derrez of Galerie Ra, Amsterdam, has written of her ‘visual poetry that carries you along into timeless, nostalgic worlds’, and this brooch featuring an unknown nineteenth-century woman, ‘monochrome and inert, like a moment from a dream’ is an evocative example.

This brooch is one of forty-five pieces of jewellery given to the V&A from the collection of the late Louise Klapisch.

M.50-2014