Silver: over the past couple of years the market for traditional areas, such as English Georgian silver, has been quiet, but high prices are being paid for outstanding designs and intriguing provenances

Apollo, June, 2004 by Lucy Morton

Over the past few years the antique silver market seems to have polarised into two extremes. Pieces that are of real artistic or historic significance, or which are unusual in some particular aspect, have attracted a great deal of interest and have fetched strong prices at auction. At the other end of the scale what could be described as commercial pieces are suffering from a marked lack of interest in the sale rooms and are tending to stick on dealers' shelves. In many respects, although this may not be comfortable for some dealers, there is little harm in this situation. It is comforting to know that when an object has real merit there are a number of potential purchasers who truly appreciate it and are keen to acquire it; conversely the market from time to time needs periods of readjustment when pieces that are of lesser significance, and have perhaps been over-valued in the past, readjust to a more realistic level. Having said this, Christie's recent sale in New York would seem to indicate that the market in general is now strengthening and beginning to move upwards again.

Somewhat lacklustre interest in 'mainstream' areas such as English mid to late-eighteenth-century silver has meant that both dealers and auction houses have had to work hard to find pieces of sufficient appeal to attract their clients' attention and there has in fact been little of great significance on the market. Much of the material on offer has been well-known already, or lacking in distinction. Generally prices at auction, and the levels of activity within the trade, have not been sufficiently strong to entice owners who might have been considering disposing of pieces into selling them either to dealers or at auction. European dealers have inevitably suffered from the drop in the number of visitors from the United States and, more recently, by the weakening of the us dollar. However a number of exhibitors at Maastricht this year reported satisfactory levels of trading, with a larger-than-usual number of European purchasers and an encouraging numberof new collectors entering into the market. In the United States business was also inevitably affected by the aftermath of the events of 11 September 2001 but now the trend is towards greater confidence and increased levels of activity.

Provenance counts: English silver

Occasionally pieces of English silver have performed extremely well but this can almost invariably be attributed to rarity or to provenance. One example is a charming and highly unusual James n salver on foot (Fig. 1) by William Gamble of 1688 (Christie's, London, 11 June 2003) decorated all over with wriggle-work engraving in a naive style that is reminiscent of contemporary textiles; attracting much attention, this piece realised 81,260[pounds sterling]. Provenance certainly helped a pair of John Scofield candlesticks of 1781 engraved with the crest of William Beckford to attain 156,740[euro] (Christie's, Paris, 18 March 2003).

Some collectors have now dropped out of the English silver market. The most prominent of these is His Excellency Mahdi Al-Tajir, the Saudi Ambassador to London. Pieces from his collection have been appearing in the sale rooms over the past few years whilst objects from an important English private collection have also been coming on to the market; in both cases they have been met with a mixed response and results have been variable. A number of significant pieces, such as a silver-gilt ewer and basin made by George Wickes for Frederick Prince of Wales, first acquired only a few years ago, did not arouse much enthusiasm on their reappearance on the market.

Continental silver: masterpieces on offer

The auction houses have recently offered some outstanding examples of Continental silver. In June of last year Christie's sold three pieces from the collection of Eugen Gutmann (1840-1925) which had finally been returned to his family after being seized by the Nazis. These were a silver-gilt Augsburg ewer by Johannes Lencker I of 1625-30 which made 1,069,250[pounds sterling], a Nuremberg double cup of 1596 (363,650[pounds sterling]) and a parcel-gilt cup by Hans Kienle of Ulm (593, 250[pounds sterling]). In the same sale was a Strasbourg cup of 1746, the masterpiece of Jean-Frederic Baer which was accompanied by a portrait of Beer holding the cup itself and which had not been on the market since the silversmith's death in 1795.

This extraordinarily well documented object with chasing worthy of the finest gold box made 363,650[pounds sterling]. At Sotheby's (12 December 2003), Christoph Lencker's figure of King David from the collection of Nathaniel Mayer Victor, 3rd Lord Rothschild reached 285,600[pounds sterling]. All these pieces are of great significance, justifying their strong prices.

There seems to be growing interest in unusual Continental pieces dating from the nineteenth century. Two pieces in particular illustrate this. The first is the 'Temperance and Intemperance' ewer of 1839 by Charles Wagner of Paris (Sotheby's, London, 15 May 2003), originally purchased by the duc de Luynes. It had not been on the market since the nineteenth century, and achieved 128,800[pounds sterling] against a considerably lower pre-sale estimate. The second was a gold and enamel-mounted jasper cup, commissioned by the duc de Luynes in 1854 from Jean-Valentin Morel, which made 299,375[euro] against an estimate of 80-120,000[euro]. Shortly after the date of the sale it was acquired by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the museum which had a year earlier acquired a nineteenth-century steel ewer and basin inlaid with silver and gold by Antonio Cortelazzo commissioned by Sir William Drake (Fig. 2). The three pieces are of greatly contrasting styles but are all outstanding statements of mid-nineteenth-century taste.