Hi,
I have what I think is a Russian wine set, please can anyone help identify this?
Thanks!
ВЗНК - maker’s (factory) mark.
Silver 875 is a silver alloy containing 87.5% pure silver and 12.5% other metals, typically copper. It’s historically used in Russia and Eastern Europe, called “84 Zolotnik” from the Russian purity system where 84/96 zolotniks equals 87.5% silver.
So this, as Bart suggests, is an eight-piece tea set made of .875 niello-decorated silver in Dagestan province sometimes after 1908. and certified for sale in Stalin’s Russia. We know this from the letter followed by the workers head facing right and the .875 purity mark replacing the older .84 Zolotnik mark.
The letter tells us in which city the Assay was completed.
The maker or factory mark consists of four letters of the cyrillic alphabet and logically would be someone or some workshop in Kubachi, Dagestan but more likely is the importer’s mark bringing it to a major centre for sale from the shores of the Caspian Sea.
The style of the tray and beakers is Caucasian, indicating that this was before the community of some 200 silversmiths was reorganized by the soviets to produce domestic items more familiar to Northern Europeans, teapots only differentiated from European containers by their pedestrian design or lack of it.
The skilled use of decorative alloys comes from generational creation of swords and other weapons mostly forged using the Syrian or Damascus systems of layered metals which had been created first by the Persians some thousand years earlier to forge an early form of super iron or near-steel long before the invention of the western bessemer furnace reduction of pig iron.
Anne Bolelyn, Elizabeth I’s mum was executed using Damascus steel wielded by the Calais swordsman probably made in this small community.
Now a very difficult part of the world to visit for westerners and very much under the thumb of Putin whose puppet government remains in power, I was lucky to have a chance to get there in the early sixties from the bureau then in Tehran. Since then it has been embroiled in almost non-stop adjacent war. The province has the misfortune to be rich in minerals and in the direct BRI China proposes in its bids to acquire Europe as a economic satellite community.
Two similar sets have been sold, one in Berlin in 2024 repurposed as a vodka flask and cups for €800 an another as a cognac set in New York for $US2,200 a couple of months ago.
Dagestan is Sunni Muslim and alcohol is strictly prohibited. So these sets are both designed for tea not alcohol and the beakers that you have in your early and faithfully-accurate set predates any similar set with stemmed cups.
CRWW
З - Ze (Cyrillic) - Wikipedia
З - завод (plant or factory).
http://www.antik-invest.ru/blog/?page_id=936
ВЗНК
В - 2003
З - the department of the State Inspectorate of Assay Supervision, in the territory of which the manufacturer of the jewelry is located.
НК - the individual code of the manufacturer.
mennik - a special code representing an imprint / stamp or an electric spark mark. Consists of 4 letters of the Russian alphabet. Let’s decipher these letters:
The first - indicates the year. A - 2001; B - 2002; B - 200zg. etc. The letters Ё, Ж, Й were excluded from the code, because they are very difficult to make on a small hallmark.
The second - the department of the State Inspectorate of Assay Supervision, in the territory of which the manufacturer of the jewelry is located. It is usually used to determine the city or region of production. A - Severnaya, Veliky Ustyug; B - Podmoskovnaya, Bronnitsy; B - Verkhne-Volzhskaya, Krasnoe-na-Volge, etc.
The third and fourth - the individual code of the manufacturer. Assigned by the assay inspection. For example: MV - Moscow Jewelry Factory, Moscow; PYa - branch of MYuZ in Perm; NI - Diamant factory (SOKOLOV jewelry company). The full list of codes can be found here.