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Description

Frog brooch. A small brooch in the shape of a frog with all four legs extended (the left, rear leg extends further than the right). The pin features two large eyes, a wide mouth, and a bony framework outlined on the back. The surface is lightly stippled. The long pin on the reverse of the brooch extends diagonally from the left, front leg to the right, hind leg. Faint inscription on underside, appears to be “R-70”.

Narrative

Dr. Sydney Friedman and his wife Dr. Constance Friedman were acquainted for many years with Bill Reid, whom they commissioned to make gold and silver jewelry between the early 1950s and 1974. However, this brooch had been a gift from Bill Reid to Marianne Koerner in the early 1970s. Constance Friedman received it as a bequest from Marianne Koerner's estate in 1992. The inscription on this brooch is “R-70”, however it appears as if it may have been inscribed as "-71" first, with a zero then scratched over the 1? In the early 1980s, Reid wrote to MOA staff to say the frog pin in the museum collection, A9349 (the only one in the MOA collection then), was the original frog brooch. That frog is clearly signed R-'71 OR, and was sold directly to MOA by Reid in Jan 1971. So the date of this brooch remains uncertain.