English 1840s Design, taken from the top, the face, of a Gold Georgian tie-pin. The monied gentlefolk of Georgian England wore neck ties of a voluminous nature requiring pinning, and the original of this cute round form sat firmly in the middle of the neck tie of the wearer, it too star-set with a Diamond.
The Diamond in the original tie pin top was the same size as in these eardrops, but it was not a “round white brilliant cut” Diamond such as these, rather it was the type of Diamond available in the mid-1800s, glinting darkly.
The cut of the little 2pt Diamonds in the above English 1840s Georgian-style eardrops is the modern Round Brilliant Cut, not properly developed until the 1950s. By the early 1800s Diamond cutting, due to increased power/speed in the tools used, had progressed mightily from the time when Diamond facets were produced solely by striking the crystal at just the right point to make it cleave, but it was not until the early 1900s that the “perfect proportions” were calculated, the number of facets and their size and position in relation to all the other facets, to create the greatest refraction of light within the crystal and direct it in its intensified brilliance out through the top, or crown, of the crystal.
The Diamond in the original Georgian tie pin top was cut “Old European”, much more subdued than the bright flash of the above little Brilliants.