Page 93 - Chinese SIlver By Adrien Von Ferscht

in this case it is the word ‘SILVER’ stamped into a rather new looking base. No 19th
century Chinese silversmith would have used such a stamp in isolation of any other mark.
Almost all of the items I referred to that fall into the category of this rather annoying
phenomenon carry a similar mark or carry the word CHINA – sometimes both. Anything
carrying these marks will almost certainly have been made post-1949 when private
enterprise became extinct in China and, as with all other manufacturing, became
nationalised and consolidated by the state into government owned collectives. Any self-
respecting 19th century Chinese retail or manufacturing silversmith would have stamped a
true piece of Chinese Export Silver appropriately and would have been proud to do so.

Particularly annoying and misleading is similar items regularly appear in auction sales of
what are regarded as premier auction houses.

How and why these canisters suddenly flooded the market will probably remain a mystery
but if anything did influence them other than trying to take a ride on a previously mentioned
bandwagon, it can only be the exquisite work of 18th and 19th century Chinese masters of
the true art of silver filigree. The well-respected Canton retail silversmith Cutshing was
famous for creating enamel and bejewelled filigree items, much of it for European royal
households, the Russian Imperial Court, Arab Sultanates and Maharajah’s palaces.

This highly elaborate silk lined basket [above] is an example of Cutshing filigree that was
originally used in the Winter Palace in St Petersburg as a glove box. It is probably late 18th
century as it is understood to have been used by Catherine the Great who died in 1796.