Hi. Totally new at this. With reference to the attached photos can anyone offer insight as to what if any value to a collector and where one could help these items find a good home ? The teaspoons is a set of six and the larger serving spoons are a pair all are engraved with initials in Cyrillic.
All I can tell is definitely of Russian origin which would make sense as they were from a grandmother of Russian stock who was part of a community of Russian expats in Shanghai China in early 1930’s.
There are a number of publications about pre and post revolutionary Russian domestic and ecclesiastical silverware. Is there any one author you would recommend your readers should rely upon?
Secondly, we saw Russian silver, even very pedestrian material, increase sharply in value post glasnost and then settle down very much following price trends of other European silverware. This seems to have become the governing trend today. Should collectors be buying at all and should there be an effort to acquire any particular makers’ and/or types of silver into collections?
Your words of appreciation are a great honor. I feel truly privileged…
As for your questions - in the age of the internet and (disturbingly) easy access to information, I rely on the achievements of modern technology (also due to my profession). I won’t recommend specific books or publications, despite my great love of books and the written word. The answer to the second question will seem sad: in Poland, silver-plated objects are of no value to dealers, and silver items, even exceptionally old and beautiful ones, are melted down as scrap. It’s worth collecting gold coins, cold steel, paintings by Kossak and Malczewski… Since childhood, I have loved being surrounded by various objects, and from the age of seven, I became absorbed in archaeology. I grew up in an intelligentsia family, hence my love of books and antiques.
What you refer to appears to be a global problem. During the Bunker Hunt kick up in silver prices I camped out on the road to the Western Canadian local smelter to intercept Georgian and earlier silver otherwise ending up in the smelter. Today so much larger work goes for scrap or less – sometimes much less.
If I was a little younger I would repeat the process today.
Your comments about growing up in Poland are also of interest. I first started visiting your country as it had been reconfigured in the early seventies. Poland and what happened to it in the 19th and early 20th century is an object lesson to those isolationists who think Putin’s ambitions are limited to Ukraine.
Politics is a slippery and sticky subject. It can divide people, and opinions reveal their true colors… Ukraine and Ukrainians themselves are a pain in the arses of Poland and Poles. To all defenders and advocates of this nation, I recommend reading about Volhynia and the memoirs of those who witnessed this brutal massacre. And I admire Putin for his stoic calm and patience… despite my utter contempt for Bolshevism and communism (not to mention leftists and the Rainbow Party).
True. Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, Putin’s hero, displayed the same sort of patience in 1945 leaving his army of occupation sitting on the far banks of the Vistula while the Nazis and the Polish community leaders annihilated each other in Warsaw basically doing his job for him.
I am only too familiar with Polish minority victims of the massacre committed by the Ukrainian Insurgent army in the village of Lipniki as members of my ex-wife’s family formerly from East Galicia were caught and died in it. Honestly, I am not sure we should condemn an entire nation for the atrocities of a minority or else I would have to indict my own birth nation for its failure to free Poland, the very country it had gone to war for in 1939.
The silver lining to all this horror is Canada gained 3.5 million extremely useful citizens whose forebears settled the Prairies living in conditions even my own fairly tough Scots ancestors wouldn’t tolerate.
We might have built railways to bind together our northern latitudes but I sincerely doubt it would exist to bind at all save and except for the Red River settlers, the Selkirk settlers and those who came after them from Eastern Europe sponsored by Sifton and settled the hinterlands.
I was rooting through a junk store in Saskatoon a decade ago and came across an unusual silver medal. It had been awarded to a ship’s captain who had fought in the 1812-15 war on the Great Lakes and subsequently joined the Assiniboian settlers in what is now Manitoba.
The medal had been awarded not by Canada but by Newfoundland before it joined us in 1949.
I asked a former classmate of mine at Spinks to sell it and was told it would stay in Newfoundland where it remains on display 'til today.
I’m glad you understand me… The rotten West is a stale state of mind… You’re probably older than me and haven’t experienced communism… I have. My whole family. You from Canada and the USA know nothing about oppression and totalitarianism. Searches, tapped phones, internment…
If Stalin were Putin’s hero, Ukraine wouldn’t be on the world map today. That’s why I mentioned his patience and understanding. Besides, Putin despises Nazism and fascism, which Ukrainians practically idolize… History doesn’t lie…
Bartholomew, You like books, silver, old things, (various), and the truth about Ukraine and Vladimir Putin. Why does nobody read anymore? Why do most, however educated, believe what they are told? Why is Russophobia so prevalent? Have they no idea what war would mean?
Plus, you are very funny. Thank you.
While acknowledging Stalin’s “totalitarian” repression, Putin has offered cautious praise for him, primarily for creating “a tightly centralized and absolutely unitary state” and for leading the Soviet Union to victory in World War II. Putin has also put up a statue of Stalin in Volgograd for the anniversary of the Battle of Stalingrad, highlighting his admiration for Stalin as a symbol of military victory and a powerful state.
Bandera Stepan Bandera was granted honorary citizenship by the city councils of many cities in what is now Western Ukraine (the number is constantly growing). Lviv is one of them. Wikipedia lists 26 such cities, emphasizing that this is only a fraction. According to the website dyvys.info, in October 2016, there were 44 monuments to Stepan Bandera in Ukraine. The most monuments were in the Lviv Oblast (20), followed by the Ternopil Oblast (11) and the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast (10). These are the western regions. According to the English-language Wikipedia, in a survey conducted, 33% of Lviv residents considered themselves Bandera supporters. On January 16, 2017, the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance reported that of the 51,493 streets, squares, and “other objects” renamed (since 2015) in connection with decommunization, 34 streets bear Stepan Bandera’s name. Due to “connections with the communist totalitarian regime,” on July 7, 2016, the Kyiv City Council voted 87 to 10 to support the renaming of Moskovsky Avenue to Stepan Bandera Avenue. Shukhevych Monuments honoring Roman Shukhevych are not marked on the map. Google Maps counts about five, one of which is located near the Polish-Ukrainian border crossing at Korchova-Krakowiec. A state school located there and a large stadium in Ternopil are also named after him.
I spent much of my professional life in Guangzhou, also romanised as Canton and Kwangchow, It is the capital and largest city of the Guangdong province in southern China.
As a westerner I am tolerated but that would cease in an instant was I perceived as a threat to the central powers.
So your presumptions are, with all due respect, unfounded. I know enough about the system of power it creates to be very careful of it.
I live in Canada but was born somewhere else and like every immigrant value both the incredible canvas my chosen country provides and the traditions of the countries of my birth.
Your presumption that the US and Canada share similar political value is just wrong. The US is a “bottom up” democracy. Canada is a “top down” democracy. Canadians generally are less nationalistic, more pragmatic and tolerant and, because we are a “mosaic” not a “melting pot” more tolerant of the foibles of others.
Your countrymen whose contribution to Canada is enormous, have much to do with this.
I may also say that right now I am extremely concerned about the US whose leader appears to be on a path he does not fully understand.
The President of the United States is following the path paved by Mossad and Israel. This is how dealings with people of Epstein’s provenance end. I was born in Poland, I live and work here, and I still feel like an immigrant and a second-class citizen… Guess why.
Speaking of Guangzhou, a dear friend of mine often visits China for business. Guangzhou has the largest watch market. Have you visited there?
Bandera was a far-right leader of the radical militant faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the OUN-B. He was born in Austria-Hungary, in Galicia, into the family of a priest of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and grew up in Poland.
Unfortunately when former movers and shakers of society are honoured for the worth they are reputed to have created we are saddled with the bad too.
This side of the pond we revere our first PM, Sir John A, MacDonald, but he was a racist and genocidal by any 21st century standard as was George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson south of the 49th.
It is a snare and a delusion using 21st century yardsticks to judge men and women of another time.
