18th C. Spanish Colonial Peruvian Silver Oval Platter

South America, Peru, Spanish Colonial to early Republican period. An oval silver serving platter with a deep, smooth well and a wide sloping rim. The rim is cut into a shaped outline of gentle lobes, with sharper points, and finished with a molded, double-reeded border that follows every curve. The metal is a high-grade silver of 88 to 90 percent fineness. Faint planishing ripples and a soft, uneven luster show the work of the hand rather than a press. The shape is restrained, closer to late Baroque formality than Rococo excess. It relies on its silhouette and its moldings rather than on chased ornament. A platter of this weight and fineness was a domestic prestige object, made both to serve at table and to be seen there. For nearly three centuries, viceregal Peru drew its silver from the mines of Potosi and the Andean highlands, and silversmiths in Lima, Cuzco, and the provincial towns made it into tableware for wealthy households and religious houses. Silver was so plentiful that it went into everyday serving pieces, platters and basins included, which in Europe would usually have been made in pewter or ceramic. The absence of marks is typical of Peruvian plate. Silver was supposed to carry assay and tax marks, notably for the quinto real, the royal fifth. In practice, much Spanish American silver left the workshop without them, whether through tax avoidance or loose local regulation. As a result, many surviving colonial and early Republican pieces cannot be dated by marks and have to be judged on form, construction, and metal content. Item # 205507

Stima:€1,605.56

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