A PARCEL-GILT SILVER AND NIELLO DISH

The subtle use of a black niello background in the form of minute scrolls and foliage on the present dish, is typical of seventeenth-century Russian niello work. The technique, called Turkish niello, was originally used by Turkish silversmiths in the Kremlin workshops.

For almost identical dishes, see S.Ya. Kovarskaya, Russian Silver of the Fourteenth to Early Twentieth Centuries from the Moscow Kremlin Reserves, Moscow, 1984, p. 27, no. 15, and M. Hofmann, Argenterie Russe Ancienne de la Collection Eugene Lubovitch, Paris, 1932, pl. XV, no. 1.