Lot 30
A diamond shrimp brooch, circa 1870
Auction: 21 October 2026 from 14:00 BST
Description
Realistically modelled as a shrimp, the body set throughout with rose-cut diamonds, with moveable legs, width 6.0cm
Provenance
Antonina Yefimovna Gracheva (1878-1956) was born in Saint Petersburgh and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris. In 1904, she married Captain Ivan Yakovlevich Samsonov and they lived in Grodno, Russia. In Grodno she became a well-known designer of clothes and model. Captain Samsonov was tragically killed in a riot in 1917. She later remarried another Tsarist officer.
Towards the end of World War II, her daughter and son-in-law escaped ahead of the return of the Red Army however she remained. In 1944 she was arrested by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, which erroneously believed her to have been married to another officer named Samsonov, the commander of the 2nd Russian Army in 1914. She was sentenced to 16 months in prison. She died in Grodno in 1956.
Thence by decent.
Also see lots 31-34.
Footnote
In the mid 19th century there was a notable trend in both British and continental jewellery for the novelty. In particular a trend for unusual animals and items used in jewellery, such as beetles, dragonflies, miniature buckets and yachts. Crustations such as this are very rarely documented.
For further reading see Charlotte Gere and Judy Rudoe, Jewellery in the Age of Queen Victoria; A Mirror to the World, The British Museum Press, London, 2010, pages 218-224.