Indian Colonial Silver Tea Service
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GUEST:
My great-grandparents bought this at auction in Montreal in about 1910. Down through my grandparents. I'm happy to say I didn't inherit it from my parents. I... they gave it to me as a wedding present.
APPRAISER:
Ah, so it's an old family piece. Well, it looks like a typical Victorian tea set, but let's just take a look at the tray first. If I could ask you to take that teapot off. The tray is a slightly different style, and I think here... Yeah, the mark on the tray here is "London 1896," so that's a late Victorian salver being utilized as a tea tray here. But looking at the rest of the tray-- the set, rather-- it actually doesn't look totally English. Some of the pieces have been added as an addition. This cream jug is, in fact, made in Dublin in 1901. Probably that was lost at some point, and it's been added. But the rest of the set, while at first glance looks like it's English Victorian, is in fact made in India.
GUEST:
Oh!
APPRAISER:
The mark on the coffee pot is "G.G. and Company," and in fact, that's a mark used by George Gordon and Company, who were silversmiths working in Madras between about 1825 and 1845. This dates from the 1840s. It's a great example of Indian colonial silver. Do you have any idea how it would have ended up in Quebec?
GUEST:
Truthfully, I don't know the history of it prior to my great-grandparents having it.
APPRAISER:
I imagine there probably were quite a few people who were in the Indian colonial service-- and they were the sort of people who were the market for this type of tea set-- probably ended up at some stage of their careers in Canada. As an Indian set, it's worth much more than a Victorian English set. Because it's what we call Indian colonial silver, it's quite a sought-after collectible at the moment. I would appraise it somewhere between $15,000 and $25,000.
GUEST:
Oh, really?
APPRAISER:
The tray on its own is worth somewhere in the region of $5,000.
GUEST:
That's very nice. Thank you very much!
Appraisal Details
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