pendant brooch silver paste

This brooch may look as if it is made of topazes. However, its 'gems' are made of the type of glass known as paste. Paste jewellery was a French invention of the eighteenth century. The glass gems are set tightly into silver backings covered in different coloured metal foils to make them look like jewels.

Paste and genuine gemstones can look very similar, especially at a distance, although certain signs give the game away. Firstly, pastes are cut into a very wide variety of different and sometimes irregular shapes. Real gems would not be cut like this as the cutting would waste too much of the valuable stone. Secondly, as soon as there is any damage to a paste setting and the silver backing is exposed to the air, it tarnishes, dulling the colour of the 'gem' to a characteristic greyish-yellow.

Despite this, pastes revolutionised jewellery and they became the height of fashion. They could sparkle as brightly as diamonds in candlelight and few could tell the difference. Aristocracy wore pastes when travelling in case they were robbed by highwaymen. People of the middling classes could wear jewellery in a style more flamboyant than they could ever have otherwise afforded. For the first time in history the desirability of jewellery was no longer necessarily linked to its monetary value.