Vanessa Pearson of London, a guest at Floriana's Phoenicia Hotel, presented Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti with a silver filigree necklace with pendant cross.
She was inspired to donate her necklace after hotel staff discovered her passionate interest in jewellery and recommended that she visit Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti's exhibition 'Vanity, Profanity & Worship: Jewellery from the Maltese Islands' at the Casino Maltese.
Ms Pearson recounted how this necklace came down to her through the family and she believes it originally belonged to her great grandmother, Elizabeth Bellingham, who was an Irish Catholic and was born in 1854, and who is believed to have visited Malta with her husband Captain John Augustin Keeshan of the late 69th Regiment (The South Lincolnshire Regiment), and probably purchased the necklace then.
The donated necklace is made of silver filigree fashioned into large links of hollow tubular shape, which is atypical of Maltese designs.