This silver shoulder brooch would have been worn by Kabyle women in the first half of the nineteenth century to fasten their robes. The Kabyles are a Berber people from the Atlas mountains in North Eastern Algeria, they believed silver was a sign of purity. The brooch is pierced and engraved with floral scrollwork and decorated with coral. Coral was often used in Kabyle jewellery as it was believed to contain baraka (good fortune) and enhance fertility. The brooch would have had an amulet attached to it by the chain.

This brooch was probably made by a Jewish silversmith. In the late fifteenth century many Jewish people immigrated to North Africa to escape persecution in Europe. The Jewish population dominated the silversmith profession until the late nineteenth century as Berbers regarded working with metal a low status profession.