Glass Message Board
Glass Identification - Post here for all ID requests => Glass => Topic started by: heartofglass on April 11, 2006, 11:36:58 AM
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Here is a salt cellar which I recently bought in an op shop. It has a clear glass liner in a silver holder with enamelled decoration.
It has an Art Deco look about it, & despite it's markings, "Siommet", & an indecipherable hallmark(?), it remains a mystery.
Googling it has turned up nothing!
Any clues?
Thanks!
P.S: Sorry to the Glass Queries Gallery, I accidentally uploaded one these pics into the Calender file.(blame a few too many glasses of red wine!)
http://glassgallery.yobunny.org.uk/albums/userpics/Siommet-salt.jpg
http://glassgallery.yobunny.org.uk/albums/userpics/Siommet-salt-mark%7E0.jpg
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:D:D:D
It's lovely! I know NOTHING about this sort of thing, but it does have more the look of Russian than Chinese cloissonne enamel. :?
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Thanks Sue :)
It's good to know I'm not the only one who finds it so slow to load!
It is a nice item, it really caught my eye. A very fine & elegant object.
Russian origin is an interesting idea-maybe that's why I can't find any info on it....
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The first thing that I thought was Russian but not because of the enamel. The mark ends with a letter "K" and that is what I keep seeing on Russian badges. I've got a Russian Olympic badge with that kind of mark but like everything else in my house, I can't find it.
So we are looking for a Russian salt cellar and it's probably by Faberge. :lol:
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Interesting piece. However, Russian silver has operated on a standard of more than 750 parts per thousand, and Faberge, never used silver content so low.
None of the Nordic countries at the time indicated by the design seem to have hall-marked below a level of 800ppt, and few books seem to indicate otherwise. Searches on eBay attribute, without documentary evidence.
Nice, very nice enamel work but..... sorry cannot help further,
Marcus
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Ok. I had a look at this earlier. :oops: I thought the I and O looked like a little glass together (look at the photograph sideways), and wondered whether it was a manufacturers design mark. Perhaps it's French and Sommet?
Ok, ok, it's only a guess. It's good to guess sometimes, right? :?: :roll:
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However, it does seem that whoever made it, salt cellars were their thing!
The rare time I get something with a marking & it turns out to be almost unheard of... :roll:
Max, I looked at the mark sideways, & it does kind of look like the I & O are joined! So clever of you to notice this! Will search Sommet now & see what turns up......
Thanks to everyone who's contributed ideas, I really appreciate it! :)
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Sue, I found an identical item to mine on Ebay!
I searched siver salt cellars.
It's listed as Russian. And the seller is in Sydney! Maybe it's the pair to mine!
Also found 2 other similar items, alternately described as Russian/Eastern European & German.
One listed by a seller in Russia.
However,the interpretations of the "Siommet" mark are quite different!
One says it's Thommet, & the other 7ommet (?).
Perhaps the confusion over spelling is due to Cyrillic lettering?
As I'm not a Russian speaker (though my first name is of Russian origin),
I'm not that familiar with the Cyrillic alphabet. But I know that some of their letters look like ours, but have different meanings.
E.g: The old C.C.C.P = U.S.S.R.
Any Cyrillic-fluent folks out there?
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I must admit cyrillic lettering had occured to me to.
b yu m m e t is the closest I can get. The first letter is the only one that I couldn't match exactly.
The 'b', if that's what it is, should have the semi-circle closed, i.e. a b with a flat top.
It could also be a Macedonian letter like an s that equates to dz.
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Cyrillic ю = our "u"
What looks like an S or 5 to us must be a stylized version of their letter B б
this give a word promounced "Byoomet"
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Awesome work everyone! :D
What a team of detectives we have at our disposal on the G.M.B!
I'm very pleased to find out that it's Russian & the lettering is in Cyrillic.
It's a long way from home......
The shop I got it in often has a lot of unusual items, many probably brought in by migrants in the post-war era. So perhaps it belonged to someone fleeing the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe....if only these objects we find could tell us their stories. We can only imagine....
So interesting! No wonder I couldn't find anything by looking for "Siommet".
And I thought it was French! :oops:
So, do we think it's Art Nouveau or Art Deco? It sort of looks a little bit of both styles.
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Hi,
I just stumbled across this thread topic while researching a salt cellar I have with the same marking SIOMMET. Mine differs in that it is red and white enamel loops on a brass background. By way of provenance, I purchased it from a second-hand shop in Prague, Czech Republic which would make it either Russian or similar. When searching a few months back I did see one the same as mine which also included a similarly marked salt spoon.
Miook
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Since I've just joined the board, this reply is a bit late. However, I can certainly solve some of the mystery.
I-OMMET, pronounced 'yummet', is the mark of the metal-working centre of Mstera Jewellers. The number in front is, I believe, some sort of date code, but I haven't yet cracked it. Yours is probably a '5'.
There should be a second marking that looks somewhat like 'u?p??K', where my ?s are replaced by numerals. The 'u' is really a Cyrillic 'ch' and is short for 'price', 'p' is the Cyrillic letter 'r', and well, 'K' is 'k'. This represents the original price in rubles and kopeks (100 to the ruble). It says something about the old economy of the USSR that a price would be permanently stamped on an item.
The metal of the holder is melchior, an alloy developed by the Russians to mimic silver, which it does exceedingly well, often even fooling the experts. I spend a lot of time on ebay convincing sellers that, no, their item is not sterling, and not even silverplate. I don't think this makes me very popular. :-)
The glass liners certainly tend to vary in quality: some of them are rather wavy and crudely made. None of them are what I would call fine glass. Despite all this, I have a large collection of this type of salts.
Lea
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I don't think this makes me very popular. :-)
Oh but I assure you it does! That s a wonderful reply, welcome to the board - hope you're here to stay!
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Lea, that's fabulous, and welcome to the board. :)
I've snaffled a slightly larger copy of Marinka's image from GlassGallery and added it directly here to show the mark detail (click the thumbnail below to see it.) There is, as you indicated, a second mark with the characters you stated...
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Thank you, Anne and Ivo, for your kind words of encouragement.
So, the original price was 1 ruble, 75 kopeks, which would have made it a relatively expensive purchase for a local resident at the time but reasonably affordable for a tourist, even at the vastly overinflated exchange rate of rubles for dollars.
Just by way of introducing myself a bit, I'll add that I mainly collect open salts, in any material, but the bulk of my collection is of glass. Also, the older I get, the more I seem drawn to glass objects in general. I'm especially fond of Scandinavian glass, having purchased my first Orrefors vase in Stockholm at the tender age of fifteen, and Finnish glass too.
At the moment I'm slowly going through many of the threads here and learning all kinds of fascinating, if useless :), knowledge--the best kind, IMHO!
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I've literally just seen a salt just like Marinka's labelled as Russian silver in an antique centre at wait for it...
£75 :o :o
Funnily enough I left it there!
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Smart lady!
They go on ebay for $5 to $30, depending on the condition, the rarity of the particular design, and the number of newbies who are trying to outbid each other right from the beginning.
Interestingly, despite the sense we might have of Russians trying to take advantage of Westerners with more dollars than sense, it's usually the Russian sources that get the material right and the antique dealers who get it wrong! Unfortunately, there will always be someone who comes along to pay the asking price. I believe I started out that way! :-[