DIAMOND BROOCH, MASSONI, 1960s

Designed as a stylised tied flower spray, set with graduated lines of baguette, brilliant-cut and marquise-shaped diamonds, signed Massoni.

Founded over 150  years ago in Rome the house of Massoni opened a shop in the Via dei Serpenti in 1880 moving a few years later to Corso Umberto, the central meeting point in the 19th century for the Italian nobility. In 1917 the firm passed to Giuseppe Massoni who moved the family shop to the Via Condotti in 1923, by which time his clientele embraced the echelons of fashionable Roman society. By 1950 the firm fell under the control of Giorgio Massoni whose sons Giuseppe and Carlo run the firm today.