I bought this at an antique shop in France 16 years ago I know some things about it l & s makers mark how much is this worth ?
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You mention you know somethings about it and refer to a maker’s mark “l & s” ?
I think know a couple of thing about it too. So let’s share.
It’s a cut glass perfume bottle with a silver top designed to hold a cut glass stopper which looks like it might be original.
I know the marks you show are a makers mark ending in “Ltd” for limited liability company and three faux uk sterling marks – a letter for a date, a lion passant for silver and a crown for Sheffield.
Except none of the marks are in fact Sheffield or any other British hallmarks.
The silversmiths of Hanau, Germany were rather good at making silver with extraneous silver marks and shipping it off to the the French who delighted in selling faux UK stuff in the belle epoch.
It is perfectly possible that that makers mark ending in Ltd actually reflects the maker in that fine German city, but I cannot read it and you say you have some ideas from looking at the original?
Perfume bottles like this usually came as part of a dressing set for a ladies boudoir’s dressing table and mirror.
They were not sold with perfume in them but as storage vessels for perfumes either bought separately or distilled by estate staff from lavender oils, rosewater or whatever else took her lady’s fancy.
As to price, the silver content is minimal and likely not sterling, perhaps .830 or lower. If the glass is not chipped and the stopper is not part of a later mesalliance you can pick them up on Ebay for between $60 and $120 or at auction for half that or in job lots of a half dozen about $25 each.
At the other end of the market are complete dressing sets, everything from ivory hair brushes to button hooks, cut glass perfume bottles and clothes brushes marked with clear sterling hallmarks and displayed in a two level leather and wood dressing case for travel selling in the late hundreds or even thousands.
I once bought such a set at a house clearance and discovered the lady of the house has stashed her stack of consols in there under the bottom lining.
(Consols are or were perpetual non-redeemable government bonds. Widows favoured them for their low risk and discounts. They only yielded 2% so as governments financed more and more wars they got less and less attractive.)
CRWW
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