Pair of buckles

This pair of buckles was formerly in the Russian royal collection. It was included in a sale of part of the jewellery held in London in 1927.

Shoe buckles were fashionable for both men and women for most of the 18th century. Although they were functional items they could be richly decorated. Many buckles in paste or imitation stones have survived but it is rare for examples in precious stones to survive. Jewellers made buckles in precious stones and silversmiths made plain silver ones.

Knee buckles were used from 1720s to fasten breeches legs just below the knee. 'In the later 18th and 19th to 20th centuries, they matched the shoe buckle and came boxed in matching sets' (June Swann, Catalogue of Shoe and other Buckles in Northampton Museum, Northampton, 1981).

It seems likely that the steel chapes for this pair of buckles were supplied to the jeweller by the firm recorded in the Birmingham Directory of 1770 as Glover and Chamot, merchants, of 1, Cannon Street. Peter Chamot's letters record that in 1763 he began a sales tour lasting twelve months which took him to Holland, Germany, Austria, and France. Glover and Chamot were major suppliers of steel goods, including buckles and buttons, to Mrs Blakey, who ran a toyshop, a shop for small fashionable articles, Le Magazin Anglois (sic), in Paris in the later 1760s. Given the extent of the firm's exports, it appears to be possible that the jeweller's work could have been executed in one of a number of European centres, including London, Paris or St Petersburg before being acquired for the Russian royal collections.