A "VIKING" SILVER INKWELL

Details
A "VIKING" SILVER INKWELL
MAKER'S MARK OF TIFFANY & CO., NEW YORK, 1900-1902, DESIGNED BY PAULDING FARNHAM

Of circular form etched with entrelac, strapwork and stylized bird's heads, the lobed shoulder applied with stylized dragon masks, the hinged cover with braided border and surmounted by a baluster finial, engraved with initials DMC, with glass insert, marked under base, 14946/4376--4¼in. diameter
(8oz.)

Lot Essay

Paulding Farnham designed a group of objects in the Viking style between 1893 and 1902. A three-piece coffee service set with zircons and hessonites was made for the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo of 1901 and is now in the Newark Museum. This coffee service and a related vase set with opals, now at the Brooklyn Museum, are illustrated in Janet Zapata, "The Rediscovery of Paulding Farnham, Tiffany's Designer Extraordinaire," Antiques, April 1991, plates X and XII, pp. 726-727. A Viking vase set with garnets and tourmalines was sold in these Rooms, January 17, 1992, lot 13, and a Viking punch bowl set with opalines was sold in these Rooms, January 21, 1994, lot 65.

The most famous of Farnham's Viking designs is the iron and silver punch bowl made for the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, illustrated in 19th Century America, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1970, illus. fig. 259.