posted 01-21-2005 08:28 PM            

First, "Zelislawski" is the mark of Antoni Zelislawski, a silversmith working in Warsaw in the early 20th Century. Second, I suspect you are identifying the St. Petersburg mark by the assayer's initals on the "kokoshnik" mark: "AP" (which is "AR" in the Latin alphabet.)

This is the mark of assayer Aleksandr Vasileyevich Romanov, who was indeed chief assayer in St. Petersburg in the early 20th century. However, it is not well-known that Romanov did not become the assayer in St. Petersburg until April 1904, when he replaced Yakov Lyapunov. Before that, Romanov was the chief assayer at (you guessed it) Warsaw, where he worked ca. 1898-April 1904.

Romanov's Warsaw & St. Petersburg marks are indistinguishable from one another. However, given the date of 1903 on your piece (when Romanov was still in Warsaw) and the presence of a known Warsaw maker, I have no doubt that your piece is Polish, made at the time it is dated, when Warsaw and eastern Poland were part of the old Russian Empire.

As for the other marks, I confess I am stumped. Antoni Zelislawski is known to have made items for Bracia Hempel, a large Warsaw firm, and their 2 marks sometimes appear on his pieces: 1) "WH" flanked by two pellets, and 2) a horizontal crescent moon with three stars above, in an oval. But these don't sound like your marks at all.

The triangular platinum mark with a horse's head - if that is the mark you mean - wasn't introduced in Poland until 1931. However, they were certainly working in platinum before then, and in Russia as well. (Indeed, Russians were pioneers in the use of platinum in jewelry and objets d'art.)

The literature on early Russian platinum alloys and marks is a little sketchy, but as the "zolotnik" mark was used for both gold and silver, there's no reason to believe it wasn't used on platinum as well. And, as 84 zolotnik is 87.5% pure, that would be a perfectly acceptable alloy for platinum. And I can't think what else "Pt" could possibly be.