www.925-1000.com

Hi All,

Hope everyone had a great Christmas. I found this nice little snuff box online, sold by a third party seller who claimed to specialise in antiques and collectables. Clearly silver is not an area of expertise as this guilloche enamel box was listed as a base metal in an obscure category...enough said. The enamel work has no chips, even on the base which is remarkable. I suspect it has been in a drawer or cupboard for decades as the silver was so black I couldn't see any of the engraving when it arrived.

So, it wears the Austrian official mark for 900 fineness 1872 - 1922 letter A for Vienna. I'm hoping one of you guys knows the maker AJ in an oval.

I have to say that these are the tiniest marks I've ever come across and I did have difficulty even through the loupe. There is another mark which I assume to be a retailers mark which looks like YZN but it could just be a model/batch internal id number of some kind. The middle letter Z is either badly struck or something slightly different as there is a leading vertical line down its front. Any way I threw it out there in the off chance someone may have come across it before.

As always, any help will be greatly appreciated.

Steve

Box top:





Front and side:





Interior:





Maker and Dianakopf:





Cropped and rotated Dianakopf:





Retailer YZN:

A search of "Austrian AJ" yields notations of Adolf Jonas Vienna (oval mark antique letters AJ). Seem possible? : http://925-1000.com/forum/search.php?ke ... dolf+jonas

Yes Adolf Jonas is a definite possibility but as the image of his unregistered mark is no longer available and the registered mark differs by description (antique letters whereas as mine are the complete opposite) I will wait and see if possibly Kristian or one of the others with expertise in this area are able to provide more info.

Cheers,
Steve

Apologies to Krisztián as I incorrectly spelled his name above.

cheers,
Steve

The most possibly maker is Adolf Jonas.
An other (lesser) possibility is Anton Jacoby!
BEst regards!
Krisztián

Images of the "unregistered" or retailer mark are restored and seem to be from the ladle query of May 2013. It is a straight line name mark. If anyone has an image of the known registered mark, please post it for reference useage.

The middle letter is very strange, it could be a stylized "ampersand" symbol (the & symbol) so you could be searching for two initials with an "and" in the middle, like a partnership of some sort, that might be a possibility___

A great find indeed, as many enamel boxes have large chips or cracks which detracts from the overall aesthetics, this one has survived intact___