Colonial Silver Filigree Tray

This fine and delicate dish of silver filigree is likely a product of craftsmen operating in the Dutch East Indies, either in Batavia or Sumatra, on behalf of the Dutch East India Company (VOC).

Its form is based on that of a breadfruit leaf, known in Malay as a daun sukun. It is infilled with fine silver filigree arrayed around a central four-petal flower motif.

Conventionally, such filigree work often is ascribed to to silversmiths operating in China, most typically in Guangdong (Canton). Certainly some aspects of the work relates to boxes and other items of vertu that also contain elements that firmly indicate China as their place of origin – see for example a pair of square silver filigree boxes and covers illustrated in Chan (2005, p.59).

Jackson & Jaffer (2004, p.232) illustrate a silver-gilt tea caddy in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, from Canton, China and attributed to circa 1760, which has similar filigree work in terms of its fineness and the rococo-like flourishes.

But whilst the leafy flourishes on this box are rococo in appearance they might also be interpreted as of traditional Malay design with its Islamic aesthetic. Indeed the work has much in common with the fine silver filigree work undertaken in Sumatra, Indonesia in the eighteenth century. Sumatran filigree work in centres such as Palembang, Padang and Lampung may well be influenced by examples from China and or the local artisans themselves may have been of Chinese descent, hence the confusion between some Sumatran-Malay filigree and some Chinese work from China.

The dish here is in fine condition.

Above: The daun sukun or breadfruit leaf.