Antique French or German Bowl

[myfathersestate]

Silver Bowl inherited from German Grandfather married to French Grandmother. Looking to identify the Mark. Thought it might be Henri Lapeyre, as they had flatware by that maker, but can not identify the mark.

[myfathersestate]

Adding larger images:

[myfathersestate]

First time on the site. Please excuse. Following are still larger images

[SteveDWollongong]

Welcome to the forum,

Your bowl is indeed French. I found interpreting the initials a little difficult to begin with but am confident I got it in the end;

The makers mark is O H separated by a hammer which is the mark of Ofti Henri.

His work premises were at 8 Bisson St, Paris.

His mark was registered from 2 September 1890 to 17 June 1903



Source; French Ministry of culture.

Cheers,
Steve

[SteveDWollongong]

A correction. I'm confident in the identification but I mixed up the surname and first name. It is Henri Ofti, not Ofti Henri. Likewise the initials are HO.

I looked at them in both directions and had the wrong thing stuck in my head.

Here is the referenced mark:



cheers,
Steve

[JayT]

Hmmm... Not sure this attribution is correct. The chasing hammer head symbol is pointing right, not left as in the original, and the lozenge is on the horizontal, not vertical axis, as in the original. Little details, but important.
That said, I don't see a likely H.O. maker in either Vol. 1 or 2 of Arminjon, which leads me to believe that either it is not a Paris maker, or that the initials are not H.O.
Good luck in your research!

[AG2012]

JayT is right. Try with higher magnification to identify the first letter, looks like ``P`` not ``H``

[myfathersestate]

Thanks so much Steve Walongong and Jay T. I had thought the letters were maybe HO or OH, or possibly OB, but I now strong believe it is the mark you have identified. The hammer facing the wrong way does not not give me doubts, as the mark is well worn, and could easily have been as shown originally. And the age and location would have matched when my grandparents would have purchased it, or it more likely when it was given to them.

Thanks so much, as this is an impressive quick response for a question that had mystified me for quite some time.

Regards,

John Stein
New York City

[myfathersestate]

And the letter is not a P, because it only reads as "P" if that letter were raised, but the "O" is indented. The P-reading is therefore confusing but mistaken, I firmly believe. John

[Dendriet]

Hi all,

I would give it a second chance because there are indeed read the letters H and O.
But the rest does not match with the original.
Maybe now someone sees clearly what would it be.




Dendriet

[blakstone]

I agree that this is a head-scratcher. When I first saw this post I thought the same as JayT and AG2012: they just don't look like the same mark to me. I'll also say that the style of the piece and monogram look more mid-19th century to me rather than Belle Epoque 1890-1903, but that is of course by no means definitive.

Larger macro images would help. The Minerva's head looks too worn to find a Provincial different, but I would suggest looking at the bigorne marks on its underside. They may very well tell us if we can rule out Paris, since the insects on the Paris bigorne are depicted in profile, while those on the Provincial bigorne are depicted from above. (This can be difficult - in some cases impossible - to discern, but doing so has more than once put me on the proper track.)