www.925-1000.com

Hi Everyone.
I have a silver metal (presumed silver) snuff box or cigarette case with hallmarks i have not as yet been able to identify. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

Hi,

Welcome to the Forum.

An image of the whole item may provide a clue to the origin of the piece.

Trev.

Hi again,

Thanks for the advice. Here is a photo of the case itself. From my limited experience it looks southern European in origin but I could easily be wrong.

A picture paints a thousand words.

See Yogya Silver at: http://www.925-1000.com/a_yogya.html

Trev.

Hi Silvery,

I'm afraid I have to disagree with Trev on this one. Living in Australia, I've seen a lot of Yogya silver due to our close proximity to Indonesia and It having been (and possibly still is) the no1 holiday destination for Aussies. With holidays, come souvenirs and so now there are at least 1/2 dozen pieces are for sale online any day of the week here and the decoration of your box does not feel right to me.
Yogya silver designs are stylised representations of local things such as lotus flowers, peacocks and Wayang puppets. The flowers aren't quite right and I believe the centre urn contains fruit which look like pears to me.

When I first saw the box, my immediate reaction was Italian...more food for thought.

Cheers,
Steve

Hi Steve,

You've probably seen more Yogya silver than I'll ever see in a lifetime, but I was particularly influenced by this image (bottom left - basket of flowers):

http://www.djokja.nl/modellen.html

And the designs on these cigarette boxes:

http://www.djokja.nl/vitrine.html

Trev.

Hi again, thanks for all the replies. They've given me alot to research. Thanks Trev for the leads on yogya silver as alot of the floral and especially scroll motifs on the lid do seem to be emblematic of that style. It did occur to me scrolling through the supplied websites however, that yogya craftsmen seem to almost exclusively favour the repousse and chasing techniques over that of the engraving used to fashion the design on my box. I shall supply more images of both the back and sides of the piece ehich may provide more insight. Steve makes the comment that it does appear to perhaps be italian in design and this does ring a bell as the eBay seller from which I bought it also made mention of perhaps italian, austrian or perhaps swiss origins. I have however looked through the website hallmark wiki to try and find a match with the known marks of these regions but to no avail.

I'll keep searching and post any updates :)

Some italian snuffbox and cigarette case

I didn't reply before but i agree with amena
style is typical for snuff and cigarettes boxes of the first half of the XX century
here an example in gold

of course i was referring to Italian pieces...

Silvering very nice snuff box

Hi again Everyone
To all that contributed, thankyou for all the links and photos and for helping me to solve the mysteries of this little box. I could have never worked it out on my own. It definitely does seem to be italian in its origins and the the amount (or lack) of wear definitely does seem to indicate a 20th century piece as has been suggested.

Thanks again,
Silvery