628. Cigar Dish, Peter Orr, Madras, India

The P. Orr & Sons’ Mount Street premises, Madras.

Silver & Elephant Toe Nail Cigar Dish by Peter Orr

This dish comprising fashioned from elephant’s toe nail in which a high grade silver tray fits and resting on four silver ball feet, was designed as an ashtray for a cigar in a gentleman’s library. (The toe nail is horn-like and appears to have a varnish.)

The dish is the product of the Madras firm Peter Orr which operated from premises in Mount Street, Madras from around 1848. Peter Orr was an expatriate watchmaker from Edinburgh.

The base is stamped ‘ORR’ and ‘SILVER’ and ‘9’.

Silver items by the firm were marked ‘ORR’ until around 1860 after which they were stamped ‘P. Orr & Sons’.