Posted 9 years ago
ho2cultcha
(5051 items)
I found this beautiful bronze bowl at the san francisco flea market today too. i have some small dirk van erp copper bowls somewhere, and they seem very thin and not so nice compared to this bronze piece with applied hairy feet. you can see how it's marked behind. i think it's very beautiful.
ho2cultcha, nice looking bowl, but not sure it's Russian. The mark reminds of something Greek or Hebrew...it's hard to make out what it says but it's not Russian.
thank you AnnaB. the woman i bought it from said it was Russian. i can't make out any of the letters, so have no idea.
i found a mark just like this one and it says that it IS a Russian mark. it's at the bottom of the page: http://www.oldcopper.org/marks/marks_q-r.php
ok...i'm taking my words back. It looks like it's Russian, and it's a pre-1917 item. The letters didnt make sense at first because it's old Russian which was somewhat different and had additional characters before 1917 (Russian Empire time). They were eliminated after 1917 (revolution). I found a similar bowl on ebay with a more legible mark. That one says "In Moscow". Yours, im almost positive, says "In Tula".
http://m.ebay.com/itm/251619212694?_mwBanner=1
City of Tula is famous for Samovars :-)
Here's another one "(Made) in Tula"...
http://m.ebay.com/itm/Antique-ARTS-CRAFTS-Rare-RUSSIAN-Hand-Hammered-RICH-PATINA-Copper-BOWL-Signed-/311463033538?_trkparms=aid%253D222007%2526algo%253DSIC.MBE%2526ao%253D1%2526asc%253D20150519202348%2526meid%253D31c30a7dc5854f7085aa6ccd485d9464%2526pid%253D100408%2526rk%253D5%2526rkt%253D8%2526sd%253D391019507624&_trksid=p2056116.c100408.m2460
thank you AnnaB. i think it does say 'in Tula' from the looks of that one. very helpful info!
i'm going to post another photo of it showing the beautiful verdigris interior.
Tula it is :
https://russianpickle.wordpress.com/2010/09/07/trademark-samovar/
I couldn't find much more on the medal or specific maker (there were a lot of them in Tula at the end of 19th century), but found that the bowl goes with a samovar to collect drops of water, or can be used as a separate kitchen item and is called "a rinsing bowl" (literal translation).
You can see a similar bowl here with a samovar:
http://www.dedov-samovar.ru/#C625
I'm going to guess it's copper rather than bronze.
Nice to see one that doesn't say India, like the millions from the 1970's.
I second AzTom on copper.
thanks again AnnaB and AzTom! this one is much thicker than any bowls like this i've seen. it does appear to be copper rather than bronze. i wasn't able to turn up much arts and crafts style things from Russia though and this is clearly that.