Gorgeous antique French hallmarked sterling silver & intaglio etched or engraved glass tete-a-tete sized 8oz claret jug PAIR, fabulous mascaron style lion's head or griffin accented solid silver handles! A beautiful pair, marvelous detail to the acanthus accented pattern, floral garland on the bases and those lovely figural handles. Not to mention the engraved pattern on the delicate mouth blown glass bodies, of course. Both with hallmarks on all separate silver parts, the French Minerve or Minerva with the tiny number "1" in the upper corners that designates the silver content as .950 (95% pure and so above the .925 standard for "sterling" silver). The silversmith marks are for Eugene Michaut, Paris circa 1882-1896. Beautiful, a pair and a unique smaller tete-a-tete, solitaire or bachelor's size!
Very good condition. There are some tiny chips around the inside bottle necks, I've shown several images of them and they really are tiny nips from inserting the stoppers. Both have the original stoppers. One bottle has had the silver base reattached, I've shown images of that also. The other decanter shows how it originally had the lower part of the handle attached to the base but the one that's been reset does not attach and is slightly turned from its original position. My first inclination was to remove the base and reset it as straight as I could but it seems to be stuck pretty well with whatever glue was used. No other notable damage, no other chips and no cracks to the glass bodies. See images for all measurements.
