Featured Silver Ewer "Bird Fish" Help Me Identify For Future Sale!

This is a classic Persian ewer, just like the ones in the links already posted. Both Arab and Kazakh styles are entirely different.

Kazakh style, chunky, with a lot of granulation, and often glass inlay partly covered by more granulation:

The Kazakhs also gilded areas between the granulation.

The only Arabs in the old Russian Empire were traders and the occasional immigrant, btw. No Russian Arab tribal silversmiths. In fact it was the other way around, many silversmiths in the Arab world were Armenians, either from the Russian, Persian or Turkish dominated parts of Armenia.

 

"The standard mark on all items is 84. This is a Russian mark and was used by silversmiths in Iran in the first half of the 20th century. An obsolete Russian weight measure, 84 zolotnik means a fineness of 875 parts of silver per thousand parts of the metal alloy used."
from this site:
https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/stories/world-cultures/the-kronfol-collection/

 

There is much confusion on this mark, even when it is in Farsi. And apparently even on the NMS site, although they don't actually say the mark was used for zolotnik in Iran in so many words.

Historically, and up to this date, the finenesses mostly used in Iran are .840 and .900.
As I said in an earlier post, Armenian silversmiths introduced the Russian 84 zolotnik mark for the usual Iranian .840 (millesimal) fineness. This was the punch they were used to. If they had used another punch, we wouldn't have been faced with this confusion now.

 

I must say everyone here is so knowledgeable, but, you are so blanking amazing! It’s like antiques version of Google/encyclopedia Brittanica!! Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

 

Wow, thank you Msalicia, so kind of you to say. I am just one of many here though. This is a great forum.