Decorative items

The Silver department offers objects in precious metals: table silver and serving pieces, tea and coffee services, kovshi, salts and sugar bowls, cigarette cases and podstakanniks, icon covers, flatware in sets and singly, and jewellery with precious and ornamental stones. Russian silversmiths and jewellery houses — Fabergé, Sazikov, Ovchinnikov, Khlebnikov and the Moscow and St Petersburg workshops — appear alongside English, German, Scandinavian and American silver.

Each lot lists fineness and weight, dimensions and a reading of the marks: city mark, date letter, maker’s initials and assay office mark; Soviet pieces carry the 875 or 916 standard with a star. Close-up photographs of the marks allow dating and attribution, and make transposed or doubtful marks visible before bidding. The state of gilding, enamel and niello, repairs and losses are noted.

Subsection circles divide the department into flatware, tableware, decorative objects, figures and jewellery, while the maker filter gathers the work of a single workshop. The search box works well with object names such as cigarette case, spoon or icon cover.

Antique silver is bought both for use and for collecting: marked pieces from known workshops, enamelled silver and signed work appreciate far more than scrap weight. Every lot shows its starting price, current bid and closing time.