Cloisonne Egg Pendant

[skinscientist]

Hi everyone,

I have been a long-time reader of the forum for educational purposes and have worked to get my knowledge of Russian silver up to speed, but I still have a long way to go. You have all been a great help. My knowledge of cloisonné and its makers during the late 19th century is rather weak, and I was hoping you could help with your impressions of the authenticity and possible maker of a piece.

This egg pendant is about 3 cm tall. I am torn as to its authenticity. In its favor, the color palette isn't overly garish, the foliate and scrollwork style is consistent with late 19th century work, and I find the bail to be of an interesting style that is particularly Russian and seen on other small enameled objects. However, the city mark is odd, and I can't tell what it is supposed to be. The wires are also strangely flat in some places and do not fully connect to form cells as seen in the image of the bottom of the pendant.

If the maker's mark is genuine and not a fantasy/forged mark, I think it could be (in cyrillic) NA, IA, ND, or ID. As the piece doesn't appear to be of the quality of Nikolai Alekseev, I feel it is probably "ND" of St. Petersburg and the city mark is the crossed key and anchor. Supposedly, this unidentified ND made other (guilloche) egg pendants and two cloisonne spoons which have been previously auctioned through Christie's and Sotheby's.

Please let me know your thoughts. I am interested as this piece is very unlike the other "Russian" cloisonne pendants that are seen all over the internet. I can't seem to find anything quite like it except for some larger eggs pendants by cloisonne masters which opened to reveal icons.

Thanks!

P.S. I apologize for linking the images instead of embedding them. The images were not appearing in the post preview. If anyone knows how to trouble shoot that, kindly let me know.

https://imgur.com/DVbg2Bs
https://imgur.com/SAonInu

[silvermakersmarks]

HI and welcome to the forum. To embed images you must post the URLs of the images themselves and surround them with the image tags which you can include by clicking the picture icon which appears above the post composition box:





Phil

[Juke*]

Hi!

The enamel items are often tricky ones. If we compare the shown one to authentic ones there are several problematic issues like enamel quality work, silver wire quality work, unclear marks etc which was also already referred to. In these cases the wish for authenticity often goes past the facts and what one can see. One can always ask if during the competitive imperial silver market these kind of sloppy works would have existed? Often egg pendants with very well known court supplier marks which has same similarities of sloppy work are obvious fakes. Thereby my judgment is that this one also is most probably a fake.

Regards,
Juke

[skinscientist]

Than you, Juke. After further research I think the city mark is supposed to be the top of the Kostroma sailing ship. Why the top of the ship appears halfway down the 84 though I do not know. As you say, did such sloppy cloisonne exist in provincial Russian works? Probably not.

I will stay in my lane of expertise which happens to be the "egg pendants with very well known court suppliers" that you speak of -- I have a small collection of translucent enameled miniature eggs by Faberge that have been authenticated by globally-known academics and authors of Faberge catalogues raisonne. These have become the objects of my study and devotion, and as you comment there are quite literally thousands of imitations, homages, and forgeries for sale at any one time, even by reputable dealers.

I was hoping to add a non-Faberge cloisonne piece to the collection to provide some breadth but it seems this may not be the one.

[bijoux.expert]

In my humble opinion, the quality of the wirework and enamel is very poor and the egg is not the work of a renowned maker.