Reference: 341

341 Antique carved coconut shell with silver mounts, made as a sugar bowl with tongs.

Antique carved coconut shell modelled as a sugar bowl with silver mounts and tongs. The silver is hallmarked with import marks for London 1909 , the silversmiths marks those of William Comyns . Two parts of the mounts are not hallmarked , namely the rest for the tongs and the capping to the nut, so they must be considered to be white metal. Down inside the nut , on the fixing plate of the screw thread , can be seen the lion passant and M&W, the 1901 lozenge shape.

The tongs are beautifully decorated , the backs of the cups carved resembling coconut ! The inner silver bowl , hallmarked under , has been gilded so as not to contaminate the sugar. The nut has been beautifully carved with five lozenges depicting African figures. Judging from the patina of the carving , I suspect that the nut was carved around the third quarter of the nineteenth century.

Whilst the overall condition is excellent there is one flaw across the seated figure opposite the tong rest. You can see in the last but one image , on the right, that there is a surface crack across both forearms and on down . This does not appear to go right through the nut , although it can be heard with gentle tapping. All in all , a most pleasing work of art , functional as well as being most decorative.