A GEORGIAN SILVER AND NIELLO HEART-SHAPED BELT BUCKLE
Tbilisi (Tiflis), Georgia, Caucasus, stamped 1880

Made of two separate curved sections on a diagonal, meeting in the centre by the overlaid heart-shaped buckle, decorated with nielloed interlocking vegetal meanders and rosettes, additionally stamped at the back with the Russian silver standard mark '84' (zolotniki), the assayer's mark of Egor Ivanovich Blomberg (Егор Иванович Блюмберг) 'Е Б' and the year 1880, and the town mark (Tbilisi / Тифлис) of St. George on his horse (1842 - 1886), easily confused with Moscow's city mark of the same theme and changed in 1886 to a symbol stylising the original city's coat of arms with arms, cross and crescent.

11cm x 8cm

90gr.

For a comparable silver belt and buckle: Anne Leurquin, Ceintures ethniques d'Afrique, d'Asie, d'Océanie, ed d'Amérique de la collection Ghysels, 2004, p. 128.