An extraordinary pair of Victorian carved bog oak whistles that work! They have been been made in to earrings at some point but what an original pair to wear! They also have Stanhope peeps with “A memory of Rothesay” in one. The other is not there. During the Victorian era, Rothesay developed as a popular tourist destination. It became hugely popular with Glaswegians going “doon the watter” (down the water, where the ‘water’ in question is the Firth of Clyde), and its wooden pier was once much busier with steamer traffic than it is today. Rothesay was also the location of one of Scotland’s many hydropathic establishments during the 19th century boom years of the Hydropathy movement. A Stanhope is a miniature convex lens, binocular or monocular, that can be used to view tiny photographic images. Victorian jewellery made use of this technology to add a new dimension to novelty jewellery.
\nThe idea evolved from a process invented by John Benjamin Dancer c.1839 that used a microscope lens on a daguerreotype camera to produce microphotographs. He eventually invented a wet plate process for printing these microphotographs onto glass slides. Rene Dagron (1819-1900), a Parisian portrait maker, used Dancer’s process to affix images to a miniature magnifying convex lens and implanted these tiny photographs and viewers in manufactured novelties, jewellery and souvenirs. The translation of this use to novelty and souvenir objects was mistakenly named for the lens invented by Charles Stanhope, not for the actual lens used, a Codding Magnifier invented by Sir David Brewster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An extraordinary pair of Victorian carved bog oak whistles that work! They have been been made in to earrings at some point but what an original pair to wear! They also have Stanhope peeps with “A memory of Rothesay” in one. The other is not there. During the Victorian era, Rothesay developed as a popular […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":100000043835,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[5308],"product_tag":[],"class_list":{"1":"product","6":"product_cat-uncategorised","7":"type-vintage-drop-earrings","8":"type-vintage-earrings","9":"period-victorian","10":"material-gold","12":"first","13":"instock","14":"sale","15":"taxable","16":"shipping-taxable","17":"purchasable","18":"product-type-simple"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"