This small gold watch pin incorporates plique-à-jour enameling behind an openwork frame featuring a heron standing amid lily pads and intertwined reeds.
The lily pads are ornamented with two diamonds and a single pearl, and the heron's eye is set with a tiny ruby.
The backplate, which is riveted to the front section, depicts a brilliant sunset in yellow, green, blue, and red plique-à-jour enamel.
Riker Brothers, successors to several firms founded by William Riker (1822 - 98), was one of several successful jewelry manufacturers in nineteenth-century Newark, New Jersey, and one of the very few to utilize plique-à-jour in addition to retailing a full line of gold and platinum jewelry.
Purchase, Susan and Jon Rotenstreich Gift, 2001 (2001.331).