SIGNED BY VEHBI, PERIOD OF ABDÜLMECID I (R.1839-61), OTTOMAN EMPIRE, MID 19TH CENTURY

The eminent SOAS professor A.D.H. Bivar wrote of the present pencase that "it makes a super publication by itself, but an even more interesting one if we can fill in the picture more broadly" due to the high quality of the silverwork and its stamped signature (correspondence with Gordon Cawthorne, 11 February 1981). Together with Géza Fehérvári, he studied the pencase over the course of two days and concluded that in all probability it was made in Ottoman Sarajevo. Sadly, they did not record the reasoning for this attribution, although the master silversmith 'Vehbi' is recorded in other work with the tughra of Abdülmecid I (Garo Kürkman, Osmanlı Gümüş Damgaları, Istanbul, 1996, p. 109).