I will make detailed photos of the kovsh.It is rather small but heavy, the walls are thick, the decor is not engraved, it is in fact deeply carved into the silver. Under the magnifying glass it is clearly seen how the chisel carved the silver. If you could only hold it in your hands and look for yourself. There is no doubt that making it took a tremendous work and any possibility of other faking techniques are excluded. Nothing can imitate the chisel work — there are places where his hand was steady and the carved grooves are done in two strokes, sometimes in deep grooves you can see that the chisel advanced slower. Simply, it is clearly seen that thick silver walls are chiseled all over. There are parts that imitate fish scales and the chisel work is better seen. They may use every possible technique to make fakes, but they cannot use chisel. It would take a month to do it even for the real expert in carving.There are few engravers left to do hand engraving of a simple message on a golf trophy and let alone to use chisel in thick silver. It would be difficult to carve wood this way and let alone silver. I regret that we must rely on pictures only. If you had it in your hands and examine it I am sure you would change your mind. Besides, I did not buy it. It belonged to that minister of war I was talking about. Believe me, I can tell under 10 X magnifying glass that the entire décor was chiseled. Regarding hallmarks, I am not an expert in faked hallmarks. I would like to see the photo of undoubtly genuine identical hallmarks. All I can tell is that nobody can carve silver this way today. It is not profitable.The factory of hunting rifles had a couple of engravers and they hand engraved the metal on the rifle to decorate it for special customers. At the time before Euro, the price was DM 1000 for one square inch.So, the point is if the kovhs is chiseled or not.Beleive me, it is.
Ivan