Something new … Russian silver

Sometime back I purchased at an out-of-town “antique” mall a pair of candlesticks. They were priced as if they were silverplate but I thought from the way they were made and the presence and location of multiple marks that they were probably solid silver. I took a chance and bought them. Initially, I was unable to decipher the marks and, although several people expressed interest in them, I was unwilling to price them when I wasn't sure what they were. Someone even suggested they might be polished pewter rather than silver. In one of my “shop rearrangings” I packed them away. I had forgotten about them and then could not remember what I had done with them. I was digging for some other things last week and found them again.

A pair of Russian silver candlesticks, St. Petersburg 1824.

This time (perhaps new reading glasses helped), I was able to figure out the marks and it turns out the sticks are Russian silver. I'm still trying to figure out the maker's mark – my Cyrillic is not very good – but they bear the assay and city mark for St. Petersburg and a date of 1824.

This is my first experience with Russian silver. The sticks definitely draw the attention because of the obvious quality of their workmanship. (They were on top of a tall cabinet when they initially caught my eye.) While the use of foliage motif decoration is something they have in common with English examples of the same period, you can see that in overall design and “flavor” they are much different, as might be expected.

One of the Russian sticks shown with two examples of Old Sheffield Plate sticks of the same period

R.J.Fendorf
Antiques 
in the Georgian Village
1714 West 45th Street
Kansas City, MO 64111
913.302.3206
jfendorf@yahoo.com