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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Finnclouds, post: 9724904, member: 84680&quot;]Lovely spoon! Congrats!</p><p><br /></p><p>I was going to stay out of this because&nbsp; 1) Russian silver is a minefield, 2)&nbsp; it was the reason I left eBay ten years ago,&nbsp; and 3) my qualifications consist mostly of the fact that I can read Russian.</p><p><br /></p><p>The spoon looks genuinely old and the quality is very good. The owner’s initials in Latin alphabet fit the period. And it is unlikely that you’d find fakes for $3 at Goodwill.</p><p><br /></p><p>However, I didn’t recognize the dvoinik on the spoon outright — I thought it wasn’t supposed to have the city mark in it. But I did find a similar example on silvercollection.it.&nbsp; See photo below.</p><p><br /></p><p>(I didn’t find the export mark someone mentioned above. There was an import mark that looked similar. )</p><p><br /></p><p>Also, it is somewhat unusual to have a Russian silversmith’s mark that consists of just one letter, “A”.&nbsp;&nbsp; One might also expect to see more examples of his or her work, especially if it is this good and made in 88 grade silver.&nbsp; A single initial&nbsp; “A” smith in Moscow was’t listed on the sites I checked.</p><p><br /></p><p>The underside of the spoon also seemed a little unusual to me.&nbsp; Lovely silverwork but perhaps not the most usual kind. I found only two examples&nbsp; of similar work when googling, and wasn’t sure about them either.</p><p><br /></p><p>That doesn’t mean this kind of work wasn’t done — just that I hadn’t come across it in my limited experience, a long time ago.&nbsp; Cheryl will know this for sure as she taught me the words plique-à-jour…</p><p><br /></p><p>I was also wondering if the A wasn’t the mark of an unknown artel — there isn’t a lot of information about them in the late 19th C, but it seems many did work for the more famous smiths.</p><p><br /></p><p>There used to be some real experts on Russian silver on the 925 boards, at least a couple of them seem to be there still. It might make sense to ask there before contacting Christie’s&nbsp; etc — you’d get confirmation of authenticity faster.</p><p><br /></p><p>Unless Cheryl gets here first…: -)</p><p><br /></p><p>Photo from silvercollection.it.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]472260[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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