French Silver Chocolate Pot with Ebony Handle and Vegetal Motifs

• Ebony - Ebony is a close grained timber, black in colour. It has a fine texture which can be polished to a high gloss, making it suitable for venereering, inlay and stringing and its use as solid timber is resticted to small decorative items and ornamental decoration, such as chess pieces and musical instrument parts. The term "ebonised" means "faux ebony", timber that has been darkened during the polishing process to resemble ebony.
• Knop (silver) - A knop on a silver item is either a bulbous protrusion mid way along a stem, such as on a candlestick or at the end of a stem, such as on a spoon, or a knob or finial on top of a cover or lid, that acts as a handle. On a stemmed item such as a candlestick there may be a series of knops of different shapes.
• Circa - A Latin term meaning 'about', often used in the antique trade to give an approximate date for the piece, usually considered to be five years on either side of the circa year. Thus, circa 1900 means the piece was made about 1900, probably between 1895 and 1905. The expression is sometimes abbreviated to c.1900.
• Rosette - A stylised circular-shaped disk with turned or carved decoration decoration applied to a surface, or carved into the surface, especially used in ceramics, jewellery, furniture, sculpture and textiles. Also known as a boss or a paterae or patera.

This item has been included into following indexes:

• chocolate pots - silver items 60
• silver, country of manufacture - French 353