Posts: 6
Registered: Jan 2007

posted 01-07-2007 06:22 AM            

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[26-1300]

Hi there,

What an interesting and helpful site, I was wondering if anyone could ID this silver dish for me, I don't even know what language to start looking in

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Posts: 1265
Registered: May 99

posted 01-08-2007 07:40 AM            

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Well, for starters, both the mark and the style of the piece look Arabic. Any ideas out there as to resources for Middle-Eastern silver?

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Posts: 845
Registered: Aug 2005

posted 01-10-2007 10:53 AM            

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I don't know of any good resources, and from what I've seen there's little regulation of marking. I suspect that, as in some other parts of the world, customers don't trust marks and a demonstration test is performed before purchase (all that wonderful high-karat South Asian gold is seldom marked, for example).

My best suggestion for identification would be to contact your local university's departments of languages, Near Eastern studies, Classics, or some such - or perhaps better, a reference librarian -- and see if you can get someone to identify the script. But if that cartouche is the only writing I wouldn't expect much luck -- it's probably too simplified to say much about. If there's an inscription in the design that would be better, but I can't tell from the photo whether that's the case (such pieces often have engraved a prayer or other invocation of Allah).

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Posts: 204
Registered: Oct 2004

posted 01-11-2007 08:58 AM            

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To add to the speculation about this piece, I'd venture a guess that the mark is in Arabic (photographed upside down) and that it is a fineness mark from either Tunisia or Morroco, former French colonies that adopted fineness marking systems like their colonial masters.

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Registered: Aug 2005

posted 01-11-2007 11:18 AM            

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Sorry, I was incomplete above. Yes, the 'mark' is definitely an Arabic language, and upside down in the photo. But it appears to have been made by multiple strikes of one or more curved punches and dots, not a formal mark punch. I believe the last characters indicate it to be .800 silver. But I think it's going to have to be read by someone who can figure out from the crude lettering just what it says - which I'd expect to be along the lines of |made by so-and-so 800|.

I did this once with a box I have, with an inscription on top. A grad-school colleague of mine looked at it puzzledly, said, "It doesn't really say anything..." but then read it phonetically - and it turned out to read 'Eleanor McKann' (more or less). Much like those "your name in hieroglyphs" pendants, someone had had her name put on a box as a souvenir!

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