Victorian Owl Brooch, 1880s, totally hand-crafted. The owl as  symbol has connotations various depending  on the culture: in the west it has positive connotations, around inner wisdom, intuition. Certainly the ancient Greeks of Attica thought highly enough of its attached attributes to make it the totem of Athens. The best known coin of ancient Greece, the Athenian tetradrachm, a large Silver coin 2.5cms round and approx 17grams weight, extensively used as currency throughout the entire Mediterranean world of “Antiquity”, depicted the goddess Athena one side and Athens’ totem, the owl, on the other.
No wonder the Victorians, who so venerated ancient Athens as a seat of learning and wisdom, considered the owl a potent symbol of valued attributes.
Initially, this brooch was crafted as a “momento” brooch;  its reverse shows an oval hollow which originally would have held a momento of  a  loved one, a spouse or offspring or dear friend, perhaps in the form of a lock of hair, which would have been held in place by glass held down with a flange of silver -lost somewhere along its 150year journey. The last image in the gallery shows the reverse.