Jug

Although the designer and silversmith are unknown, this silver snake jug forms part of the group of trompe l’oeil objects produced during the 1870s-80s by the Gorham factory in Providence, Rhode Island.

Figural novelty silver-mounted glass claret jugs are a favourite collectable and some of the most popular examples are fashioned as animals.

This pair of silver-mounted frosted glass claret jugs has marks for James Samuel Hunt and London, 1844.

The George III silver wine jug sold by Tennants in Leyburn in March is the exact pair to another the auction house offered on behalf of a different vendor two years ago.

The quasi-medieval silver and glass ‘claret bottle’ designed by Charles Robert Ashbee for the Guild of Handicraft is one of the great pieces of the Arts & Crafts movement. Ashbee mentions it in his 1909 book Modern English Silver, saying: “The shape is taken from an Elizabethan sack-bottle found when digging the foundations of [my home] the Magpie and Stump in Chelsea.”

The Birmingham silversmithing firm of Hukin & Heath received the approval of the progressive (if slightly pompous) writers of The Furniture Gazette when it signed a big name to produce some of its designs in 1878.

Full-blown repoussé ornamentation defined Baltimore silver in the antebellum period.

Tennants’ (20% buyer’s premium) summer silver sale included a Victorian jug by Robert Hennell with Brontë family connections.

The latest design sale at Roseberys featured this Aesthetic movement silver and ivory claret or water jug designed by Christopher Dresser.

Silver was the major strength of a recent two-day sale at Dreweatts (25% buyers’ premium). All bar one of the 549 lots got away to a hammer total tipping the £1m mark.

An imposing silver gilt jug and basin by a master goldsmith of the Empire period is one of the highlights of Osenat’s L’Empire à Fontainebleau auction.

A collection of silver assembled over half a century by a Brussels general practitioner with a passion for 18th century French silver is to be offered for sale by Dupont & Associés, Morlaix Enchères, at Drouot in Paris on December 6.

Beer jug or wine jug? The expect purpose of Georgian silver pear-shaped jugs is sometimes unclear.

The sale at Bellmans (22% buyer’s premium) in Wisborough Green, West Sussex, on March 8-11 included an example of Alexander Crichton’s famous walrus silver and glass claret jug.

The Little collection of early English silver is coming to Christie’s London on December 3. The auction comprises 26 domestic vessels from the Tudor and early Stuart periods that survived the tumult of the Civil War period. Some pieces are considered the last of their type in private hands.

One half of an extensive single-owner collection of novelty Victorian and Edwardian silver and glass animal objects went under the hammer at Reeman Dansie’s two-day sale in Colchester last week.