Early Colonial Silver & Gold Filigree Dish

This silver filigree dish or salver is one of the finest examples we have seen. It is composed of extremely fine, openwork silver filigree. The main ribs and the rim have all been wrapped in gold, which is all intact. The filigree has been arrayed around a central gold-wrapped flower motif. The dish rises at the sides and has a beautifully scalloped rim.

The gold work on this dish has been applied not with the usual mercury-fire gilding but by having thin sheets of gold delicately wrapped over the areas to be highlighted in gold. This is most evident around the rim of the dish. This is the first time we have seen this technique to apply gold on such a dish and suggests that it might be earlier than most extant examples. The thickness of the applied gold is also why the gold has remained in place and not worn away as is the case with most other examples. This dish is very fine but the use of gold and the manner in which it has been applied makes this dish unusual.

The construction and gilding of the main ribs is similar to a parcel-gilded silver filigree casket and case illustrated in Jordan (1996, p. 219) which is attributed to late seventeenth century India.

The precise origins of this dish are open to speculation. Possibly, it was made in India, or it was made in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia today) and was exported to Europe by the Dutch East India Company (VOC), or it was exported to India, where such filigree seems to have been much in demand, and from there it was acquired and brought to Europe. The fact that so many examples of this type of filigree work seem to have been acquired in India has given rise to the assumption that it was all produced in India. But that need not be the case and does not allow for the possibility that it was made elsewhere and imported into India.

Overall, this dish is an exceptional example. The manner of the gilding suggests an earlier dating.