PURSE

Ajoure metalwork, guilloche engraving and yellow glass enamelling decorate this purse. Ajoure metalwork is cut into lace-like floral patterns, rather than built up as in filigree work. The tiny interlocking lines of guilloche engraving have appeared on metals since the eighteenth century. Here the engraving is covered by glass enamel to create the smooth and lustrous finish popularized by Peter Carl Fabergé, the nineteenth-century Russian jeweller famous for his enamelled eggs.