Rosalie Gilbert

It's been a long process with Keystone Forge making a reproduction of my gorgeous extant 14th century brooch. It's a beautiful piece, loving and laboriously crafted. I have a small stock which will be for book'n'brooch bundles and as part of giveaways but I WON'T be selling them. Our friends at Mainly Medieval will have them in stock exclusively.

This brooch is not huge, but true to size in measurements and an absolute stunner. Here's my gorgeous original:

Step 1.

Keystone Forge were able to handle my original brooch, take photos and precise measurements for a wax mold which is true to my original.you can see the wax without the leaf detail at this stage.

Step 2.

Little blue molds with hand carved leaf detail to match the original. This was a very intensively time-consuming part because there were many to carve.

Step 3.

After casting, the brooch is cleaned up a little but still has a dark residue which needs to be laboriously polished to get a bright finish! They took hours in the tumbler, and then again by hand afterwards. Often these types of items are left with the antique look of darker bits in the recesses, but that's not the look I wanted for this.

Step 4.

The finished product! It's just beautiful! I didn't want that two tone look with dark in the grooves because brass brooches were made to be copies of bright gold ones, like nobles had, so it needed to be polished up to match how my original would have been.

I'm really beyond delighted.