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AEDHard Stone, Jeweled, and Enameled Cane
About Seller
125 West Market Street
Johnson City, TN 37604
United States
Family-owned and family-run Johnson City Tennessee auction business for 25 years. Selling antiques and collectables for 38 years. Kimball M. Sterling, Inc. was founded and is owned by Kimball and Victoria Sterling, time and again, they have laid solid claim to world-wide attention and renown with an...Read more
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About Auction
LiveJan 3, 2026
Masterpiece Cane auction is all from a Europeon collection. We offer items from this private collection about once a year, Kimball Sterling kimballsterling@earthlink.net
View Full Catalog (89)
- Lot Description
Ca. 1870
Substantial turquoise knob fashioned from a single stone in a ball shape, with a smooth, polished, plain surface revealing the mesmerizing opaque blue color and beautiful natural dark veins.
The turquoise ball is graced by a silver-gilt cylindrical collar with calibrated round garnet cabochons alternating with matched turquoise ones, all individually set in raised bezels and backgrounds, with delicately chased scrolls embellished with colored cold enamel.
In addition, the collar is framed with two integral rings: the upper one struck with the rarely seen Austrian Lion Head silver hallmark with the letter “A” for Vienna and the number “4” for the control office in Ybbs, and the lower one with two hardly noticeable, obscured maker marks.
The knob comes on a beautifully streaked and richly hued Coromandel shaft, occasionally called Makassar Ebony, and a metal ferrule.
A characteristic sense of luxury shines through this exquisite cane, which distills pretty much of the traditional, revival jewelry of that part of the world and epitomizes the artistic eclecticism of the Austro-Hungarian court.
It was part of the assets owned by the same original Viennese noble family for over one and a half centuries, remaining intact and only needing some surface cleaning.
Frequently seen as mascots and likely to be individually chosen for personal reasons, canes with hard stone ball knobs became popular in the last quarter of the 19th Century, reaching their peak around 1920. Their varieties make them fantastic and decorative collectibles.
Notably, turquoise is a powerful stone of protection for both the physical and spiritual realms.
Turquoise was obtained from the Sinai Peninsula before the 4th millennium BC in one of the world’s first crucial hard-rock mining operations. It was transported to Europe through Turkey, which may account for its name, a French term for “Turkish.” Highly prized turquoise has come from Neyshabur, Iran. American Indians have worked numerous deposits in the southwestern United States for centuries.
Coromandel, or calamander, is a valuable wood native to Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. It is a hazel-brown color with black stripes (or the other way around), very heavy and stiff. It is also known as Macassar ebony or variegated ebony and is closely related to genuine ebony, but is obtained from a different species in the same genus.
H. 1 ½” Diameter, O.L. 34 ¼”
$700-$900
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