Italianate coffee pots and covered sugar basins are the most recognisable domestic forms in Maltese silver. And they are much coveted.
The sale at Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury on January 24-25 included a baluster form coffee pot with shell scroll and trellis decoration, cone finial and circular foot dated to c.1740. Weighing just under 15oz and struck with the unidentified maker’s mark MP, it dates from the first years of the long and opulent tenure of Grand Master Emmanuel Pinto da Fonseca (1741-73).
Valued way above the equivalent English vessel at £3000-5000, it sold at £17,000 (plus 25% buyer’s premium) to ‘an overseas buyer’.