Featured Yogya silver ZN800 bowl

Hi all, picked this up recently at a charity shop for NZD5 and research tells me it's Yogya silver from the studio of Atelier Zaini. I gather it would be from the 1920s-ish. 18cm in diameter and 149gm.
Does anyone have any idea of it's value (roughly)?
Thanks in advance

 

The article on Yogya silver on 925-1000 indicates that the earliest date would be 1930.

https://www.925-1000.com/a_yogya.html

 

Yes you're right, I read the same article but got the date wrong - I thought I'd remembered 20 rather than 30, thanks

 

No problem, Dory!

 

I agree, no older than 1935.
ZN stands for Zaini, which was the maker's first name. Zaini came from a family of silversmiths.
800 is the silver fineness or silver content.

Most Yogya silversmiths worked in Kota Gede, near Yogyakarta.
The families often worked for the local royal and princely courts. When the courts lost most of their grandeur, the craftspeople faced losing their income.
That is why the wife of the governor of Yogya began a project in 1930 to let them make silver for the colonial (Western) market and for export, using traditional Javanese techniques and decorations.
Your bowl dates from the colonial period. The designs around the rim are stylised lotus flowers.

 

You got a bargain. The scrap silver content is about NZD 125 at today's price. These don't often sell for much of a premium above scrap. I would date it as late 1940's-1950's rather than pre-war from the design and workmanship.

 

I don't know of any post-war documentation about Zaini's ZN mark, only pre-war. As far as I know, his brother Rodjikan joined him in the late 1930s, when the mark was changed to ZNR.
But if you have other information, I would love to know more.

 

There is a monumental tray of his selling on Catawiki right now (https://www.catawiki.com/nl/l/53732377-800-zilver-indonesie-midden-20e-eeuw) with the ZN mark, dated 6th January 1951. Now it could be from before the war and inscribed afterward, but I doubt it. Silversmithing diminished dramatically with the loss of the domestic Dutch market during the 40's, and there would have been significant risk of confiscation and theft during the Japanese occupation and the independence movement immediately after liberation, with very limited sales to Japanese officers. It only picked up again with the trend of giving political gifts to diplomats and other officials during the late 40's, and the rise of tourism in the 50's, so I rather think it would have been made to order, maybe part of one of his famous tea sets. The pattern has interior fluting, which is definitely a pre-war style, so he obviously survived the war, and so his work stretches from the 1930's to at least the 1950's.

 

The engraving yes, the mark we don't know.
It is a pre-Rodjikan mark, and as you said, the style is earlier. The date could have been engraved afterwards, not that unusual.

The tray is in the Netherlands. Most Djokja silver came to the Netherlands before WW II, for obvious reasons.
The date engraving is in Dutch, but the same spelling is used in Indonesian. Since the tray is in the Netherlands, it is likely to have been engraved in Dutch.

It was engraved in 1951, after the Indonesian independence war, which lasted until 1949.
Dutch nationals weren't exactly flavour of the month in Indonesia after 1949. Most had already fled to the Netherlands, often with only the clothes they were wearing, and glad to make it out alive. People were packed together on the ships, women and children separate from the men. The Red Cross provided extra clothing in ports along the way. It was a situation where buying monumental silver trays just before they left wasn't on their list of priorities, to put it mildly.

So my guess is that the tray was engraved in the Netherlands, after it had arrived here at some earlier date. I would also guess that the earlier date was before March 1942, the Japanese invasion of Indonesia.
No proof, however, just following historic circumstances. The tray could have been a rare exception of course.

But back to the mark.
If the Zaini mark, without the R for Rodjikan, was used after the war, there is a possibility it could have been used by someone who took over the workshop and used the mark, dropping the R.
But again, we don't know, at least not now.

Let's hope someone else comes across this thread in future, and will be able to tell us more.

 

I certainly won't argue the point - dating of Djokjaware is notoriously difficult without inscriptions, and your scenario is very feasible. I believe many Dutch would have visited Indonesia in the post-War years as tourists, because they grew up there and would very likely have yearned to return home, if only for a visit and to see old friends and neighbours, after the animosities had died down.
Going back to the shape and form, notwithstanding the mark, it is more typical of silverware produced in the post-War than preWar period, which is where I was coming from. Incidentally, your knowledge of the marks seems a little deeper than what is available in Pienke Kal and on the djokja.nl website, which mentions the ZN vs ZNR relationship, but doesn't discuss the time period. Do you have access to other, more detailed sources of information about Djokja marks?

 

The thing is, animosities towards anything Dutch related only died down in the 70s, much to the distress of many of the older generation of Dutch Indonesians. You may know of the historic events in the 1960s, as portrayed in a film like 'The Year of Living Dangerously'.
My own father-in-law and his siblings sadly never saw their grandmother again, who died in Yogyakarta during that period. They never even knew what happened to her.

I had, specifically about Zaini, but I lost my notes in a computer crash. For some time my health prevented me from making hard copies. Unfortunately around that time I got the 'black screen of death' after a microsoft update.
But I remember I heard it years ago on 'Tussen kunst en kitsch', the Dutch Antiques Roadshow. It could have been either Frans Leidelmeijer or Jaap Polak who mentioned it, but I am not sure which one. I took notes because I had a few ZN pieces at the time.

I have a few volumes of 'Inlandsche kunstnijverheid (etc)' bij Jasper and Pirngadie, I think the precious metal volume is among them. They are in one of my boxes, if I come across them I'll see if there is something that would be of help to you.

 

[QUOTE="I have a few volumes of 'Inlandsche kunstnijverheid (etc)' bij Jasper and Pirngadie, I think the precious metal volume is among them. They are in one of my boxes, if I come across them I'll see if there is something that would be of help to you.[/QUOTE]

I have the relevant volume IV - de Goud- En Zilversmeedkunst in pdf form, though as I don't read Dutch it's painful to find anything. In any case, that was written in the 1920's before the revival of Djokja silver trade, and focusses on the art itself, rather than the trade, so does not mention individual silversmiths or their workshops. I did start to translate it a few years back using Google Translate, but really need to find a better online tool, as they limit the amount of text one can translate to 5000 characters in a single transaction.

 

True. I couldn't remember the exact time frame when I wrote it, but did think about that later.

If you need specific details translated, just ask, from any Dutch source. Google translate can make a mess of things sometimes. But 5000 characters is a bit much for me too, officially my translator days are over.

 

Lovely new avatar, Mar!

 

Thanks, Sue.
More about her here:
https://www.antiquers.com/threads/unknown-chinese-porcelain-marks.67306/#post-4359839