Fob Chain Handmade Silver. Victorian England made fashionable the chain linking the watch in the vest fob pocket to a button hole of the vest, thereby hopefully securing the valuable watch from loss.
Victorian England produced many of these chains, mostly in Silver, and mostly in Birmingham, the production of these Alberts being largely the reason for the city’s sobriquet “Silver City”.
Most Silver Alberts were created in the plain “curb” link; any other link profile was considered “fancy”, and even the quite plain chain link design in the above handmade reproduction is considered a “fancy” Albert.
Once so easy to obtain, the Albert chains made from original Victorian-era chain, usually with lots of the English “Lion Passant” stamps, are increasingly difficult to source. The above handcrafted chain is as good an example of hand-worked Silver as any made in Birmingham 100 years ago, and at least as, if not more so, sturdy.