A LARGE PARCEL-GILT SILVER AND NIELLO BEAKER

The subtle use of black niello background in the form of delicate lacework, minute scrolls, foliage and dots on the present beaker, is typical of seventeenth-century Russian niello work. The technique, called Turkish niello [turetskaya chern’], was originally used by Turkish silversmiths in the Kremlin workshops.
For a similarly formed and nielloed beaker, made in Moscow during the late seventeenth century, please see A. Odom, Russian Silver in America: Surviving the Melting Pot, London, 2011, p. 51.