Lot 137: Victorian Sterling Silver Footed Bon Bon Dish by Jones and Crompton London 1898 101 gram

A Victorian sterling silver pedestal bon bon dish or sweetmeat basket. The piece is designed in a boat shape with a gadrooned lower body and elevated angular handles. It stands on a raised oval pedestal foot with stepped edges. The interior of the bowl shows a faint golden colour. The underside of the foot is struck with a series of five hallmarks. These include a lion passant indicating sterling silver purity, a crowned leopard’s head for the London assay office, the maker’s mark ‘J & C O’ in a rectangular punch with clipped corners for Jones and Crompton, and a lowercase date letter ‘c’ in a pointed shield for the year 1898. A small circular aperture is present in the centre of the base from the manufacturing process, and there are several handwritten inventory marks scratched into the silver including the characters ‘D’ and ‘X’.