1940s Jewellery ‘Treasure Trove’ Valued | Antiques Roadshow UK

You know what's quite poignant, when you look at old jewellery, is that you realise that they are a representation of the time that they were made. When such pieces like this would have been worn very frequently, you know, a lady would have gone out to some great ball or function, cocktail party, and then they would have worn their diamond watch and their diamond brooch, and they would have carried their powder compact with them. Now, I'm assuming, therefore, that these would have been worn by someone who was in your family? They were my aunt's, and she married a wealthy Egyptian in the 40s, and these were part of her treasure trove, I guess, from that period. These have been kept in a safety deposit box for many years, and I'm just interested to find out a little bit of the history, really. Well, I'm going to come on to these two pieces in a moment, but I just wanted to talk about this, which is a powder compact. Powder compacts somehow evoke the age that they were really being used. It's very pretty. You've got this silver-coloured frame, and then you've got this detail of the two birds in gold with little rubies. Now, we're careful how we open it, not to get the cloud of powder. There we are. If I rub away at the edge, I can see a word there, and that word is Boucheron Paris. Wow. Now, Boucheron is one of the great makers, and in the 1940s, actually during the war years, they used to make these powder compacts, and they were very popular. We need to remember that business went on in the 1940s, but they made the frames not in silver or white gold or platinum, they made them in white metal, because there was no money about, and there wasn't the precious metal. Now, the watch, cocktail watches were all the rage from around about 1925 right the way through, certainly until the war years. It's mounted up in platinum. It's set throughout with diamonds, typically in a rectangular shape. This watch, when you look at it with a lens, it's signed Boucheron and Constantin. One of the great makers. So, here we've got a lady who doesn't only have very chic items, but she's had them made for her by some of the top leading houses of the day. Let's move on to the third component of this group. Double clip brooches were the look of the deco period. You would wear a smart little jacket, let's suppose it was navy or black, and then you would remove the clips by splitting them into two components, and then you would put one on each lapel of your jacket, and you can imagine how chic, how smart. So, she'd go to this ball or function wearing her Boucheron diamond watch, her Boucheron powder compact, and her diamond double clips. She was some girl. Now, white metal, it's not silver. This box is probably worth £1,000 to £1,500. Something like that. The watch, because it's by such a fine manufacturer, £3,000 to £4,000. Now, the double clip. In this light, can you see how white the diamonds are? They are a combination of brilliant cut stones and baguette cut stones mounted up in platinum. I can tell you, having looked at them with my lens, they are beautiful. £8,000 to £10,000. So, combined value, £12,000 to £15,000. Fantastic.