LARGE RUSSIAN SILVER and ENAMEL EGG, IVAN KHLEBNIKOV

LARGE RUSSIAN SILVER and ENAMEL EGG, IVAN KHLEBNIKOV
LARGE RUSSIAN IMPERIAL SILVER and ENAMEL EGG, IVAN KHLEBNIKOV
Extremely nice job.
A large Russian gilt-silver enamelled egg ovoid in two halves on a three-legged stand.
The base interior is the gilt covered, the exterior is blue, green, and red geometrical and floral ornament decoration with four varicolored roosters on the front and the back of the egg.
Marked with Kokoshnik 84 silver mark, IKh in Cyrillic for IVAN KHLEBNIKOVand double-headed eagle mark.
CONDITION: The item is described to the best of our knowledge. Please refer to pictures and email with any questions.
LARGE SIZE: 3 3/4 inches high (10 cm). Weight without stand: 5.5 oz (156 grams).
ESTIMATE PRICE: $4,000 - $5,000.
You have a GREAT CHANCE to purchase a unique item for your collection - over the years it will only increase in price.
HISTORY of SALES: A few years ago Russian silver enamel eggs were sold on Live Auctioneer for $4,800, $5,000 and $5,750 (in 2013) - please see the screenshots.
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WIKIPEDIA: Khlebnikov was an Imperial Russian jewelry firm, founded ca. 1867 by Ivan Khlebnikov in Saint Petersburg, but transferred to Moscow in 1871. The business was highly successful and received the Imperial Warrant producing work of originality and highest quality using decoration in the traditional Russian style on many pieces. Enamel was a speciality especially plique-a-jour, but also cloisonne. Demand for its work was high and in 1882 it employed 200 craftsmen. The business succumbed at the time of the Russian Revolution. Sazikov's successor, Khlebnikov, who opened his Moscow workshop about 1870, won prizes at the great European exhibitions and achieved international fame for enamelled silver. Among the Khlebnikov specialties were silver chasing and casting to simulate wood, birch bark, and fabric. This kind of trompe-l'oeil design was an extremely popular aspect of the pan-Slavic style, and in addition to boxes and cigar cases engraved to look like actual cigar boxes, including their labels and tariff stamps, Khlebnikov and other makers also produced trays and salvers in the form of woven reed fruit baskets, sometimes with a draped napkin and occasionally a leafy fruited twig, entirely done in chased and wrought silver. These were so popular abroad that Tiffany and Company in the United States retailed imported examples, and firms like Gorham copied them for their own market. Khlebnikov was one of several makers also celebrated for their cloisonne and plique-a-jour enameling, in which powdered colored glass or vitreous paste is applied to the silver and then kiln fired. Forcloisonne enamels, the outlines of the overall design are formed by an intricate network of fine silver wire soldered to the surface of the piece. Each of the cloisons (cells) formed by the network is filled with a separate color, and the piece is then fired. Like cloisonne, plique-a-jour (literally "open to light") is also set into a wire framework, but to achieve translucence, there is no silver backing. Hence it is the most fragile of all enamels and produces an effect like that of a miniature stained-glass window.