Antique Banded Agate, cut in Idar-Oberstein in the 1800s for the English market.
Idar-Oberstein, in the west of Germany approximately midway between Darmstadt and Luxembourg, a coloured gemstone cutting centre for hundreds of years before the increasing technical expertise of the 19th century, and the exploitation of plentiful gemstone deposits in places like Brazil, made it Europe’s largest gemstone cutting region, supplied huge quantities of cut Agate gemstones to the English market, to be used in ring settings, in bracelets, in necklaces, in “spinners”.
A century and a half later it is still possible to source, in London and in other centres, unset unused examples of the production of fine interesting gemstones such as the above Antique Banded Agate.
Fine black and white banded Agate gemstones such as the above were particularly popular in England in the latter part of the 1800s.