VERY RARE LARGE RUSSIAN SILVER & ENAMEL KOVSH, KHLEBNIKOV A LARGE Russian Silver and Enamel Kovsh. Fully Signed & Hallmarked. Provenance: From an Upstate NY, Home. CONDITION: Generally Good Condition. The item is described to the best of our knowledge. Please refer to pictures and email with any questions. LARGE SIZE: 8,5 x 5 x 4 inches (21.7 x 12.2 x 10.2 cm). Weight: 306.3 grams (9.85 ozt). ESTIMATE PRICE: $10,000 - $15,000. You have a GREAT CHANCE to purchase a unique item for your collection - over the years it will only increase in price. HISTORY of SALES: Few years ago Russian silver and enamelled LARGE kovshs were sold on Live producteer, Sotheby's and Christie’s for $11,500, $26,000, $35,000 and $59,000 - please see the screenshots. PAY in PARTS: You can pay for any item during 2-3 months. Just make a deposit 10% and the item will wait for you. SHIPPING: Combined shipping is available - next item will be ONE DOLLAR for shipping. NEW: Returning customers will have 50% DISCOUNT on shipping. WIKIPEDIA: The Kovsh is a traditional drinking vessel or ladle from Russia. It was oval-shaped like a boat with a single handle and may be shaped like a water bird or a Norse longship. Originally the Kovsh made from wood and used to serve and drink mead, with specimens excavated from as early as the tenth century. Metal Kovsh began to appear around the 14th century, although it also continued to be carved out of wood and was frequently brightly painted in peasant motifs. By the 17th century, the Kovsh was often an ornament rather than a practical vessel, and in the 19th century it was elaborately cast in precious metals for presentation as an official gift of the tsarist government. WIKIPEDIA: Khlebnikov was an Imperial Russian jewelry firm, founded ca. 1867 by Ivan Khlebnikov in Saint Petersburg, but transferred to Moscow in 1871. The business was highly successful and received the Imperial Warrant producing work of originality and highest quality using decoration in the traditional Russian style on many pieces. Enamel was a speciality especially plique-a-jour, but also cloisonne. Demand for its work was high and in 1882 it employed 200 craftsmen. The business succumbed at the time of the Russian Revolution. Sazikov's successor, Khlebnikov, who opened his Moscow workshop about 1870, won prizes at the great European exhibitions and achieved international fame for enameled silver. Among the Khlebnikov specialties were silver chasing and casting to simulate wood, birch bark, and fabric. This kind of trompe-l'oeil design was an extremely popular aspect of the pan-Slavic style, and in addition to boxes and cigar cases engraved to look like actual cigar boxes, including their labels and tariff stamps, Khlebnikov and other makers also produced trays and salvers in the form of woven reed fruit baskets, sometimes with a draped napkin and occasionally a leafy fruited twig, entirely done in chased and wrought silver. These were so popular abroad that Tiffany and Company in the United States retailed imported examples, and firms like Gorham copied them for their own market. Khlebnikov was one of several makers also celebrated for their cloisonne and plique-a-jour enameling, in which powdered colored glass or vitreous paste is applied to the silver and then kiln fired. Forcloisonne enamels, the outlines of the overall design are formed by an intricate network of fine silver wire soldered to the surface of the piece. Each of the cloisons (cells) formed by the network is filled with a separate color, and the piece is then fired. Like cloisonne, plique-a-jour (literally "open to light") is also set into a wire framework, but to achieve translucence, there is no silver backing. Hence it is the most fragile of all enamels and produces an effect like that of a miniature stained-glass window.
