Page 347 - Chinese SIlver By Adrien Von Ferscht

This snuff bottle is repoussé and chased
on each main side with a garden scene
in a quatrefoil frame, one showing two
boys playing with a firecracker in front of
a small building or pavilion with a pine
tree growing nearby, the other with an
elderly man holding a walking staff,
attended by a young boy carrying a vase
of blossoming prunus in a similar setting
with a low balustrade, two buildings, a
flowering prunus tree, and bamboo. The
ground in both panels is stamped to
produce a pattern of small raised dots
that are also used as an outer frame for
the panels; the neck is impressed with
two seals, Huiyuan and a mark for “solid
silver”.

Hui Yuan silver snuff bottles are highly
collectable.

This Hui Yuan kettle is dated circa 1875. As with
Chinese Export Silver, it has been made using
heavy gauge silver. It carries the Hui Yuan mark
in the same manner Chinese Export Silver
would be marked.

It is really the shape of the silver work in the
handle and the use of an ivory crossbar that has
a reticulated silver motif applied to it that sets
this apart from something one might expect
from a Chinese silversmith working in China.
As with all Hui Yuan pieces, it is high quality.
Hui Yuan silver, however, is quite rare and
considered highly collectable.

Images courtesy of Michael Backman, London; Bonhams, Hong Kong; Ralph M. Chait Galleries, New York

http://chinese-export-silver.com Image Library Archive