This silver fibula would have been worn by a Kabyle woman in the first half of the nineteenth century. The Kabyles are a Berber people from the Atlas Mountains in North Eastern Algeria. The front and back are decorated with a pattern of silver wire forming spaces filled with enamel or coral. To one side of the brooch is a fixed pin with an open ring that would have been used to attach the brooch. It was originally one of a pair, which were worn on the front of the body, just below the shoulders, to hold the wearer’s dress together. The two fibulae would have been linked by a chain attached to the loop at the top.

This brooch was probably made by a Jewish silversmith. In the late fifteenth century many Jewish people immigrated to North Africa. The Jewish population dominated the silversmithing profession and bought with them many new jewellery techniques (such as enamelling) which they handed down from generation to generation.