brooch glass gilt metal plastic

Norwich Castle owes most of its jewellery collection to one very generous donor, Mrs Anne Hull Grundy (1926-1984). German by birth, Anne moved to Britain just before WW2. She and her English husband became passionate decorative arts collectors. Anne later became severely disabled by illness but continued to purchase art objects, particularly jewellery. In the last few years before her death she gave thousands of pieces from her unique collection to museums around the country.

To Norwich Castle she gave mainly jewellery of the nineteenth-twentieth centuries. One of the most striking pieces is this unusual brooch in the form of a fly, in typical Art Deco style of the 1930s. Its form is simple and stylised, and the most modern material of the time, a form of plastic, is used for the fly's wings. Art Deco was noted for embracing new technology and materials.