Rarely seen very fancy 1770s Irish Georgian sterling silver sugar nips/tongs

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Rarely seen very fancy 1770s Irish Georgian sterling silver sugar nips/tongs:
$174.99

We are listing these very rarely seen extremely fancy 1770s Irish Georgian sterling silver sugar nips (or tea tongs, as they were known in the 1700s) by an unknown Dublin silversmith. Sugar nips were the predecessors of cast and bow shaped tongs (which continue to the present day), and Irish nips are generally the fanciest and most rarely seen of all. The nips have the hallmark Irish flower head designs on each side of their hinge, nicely beaded finger rings, extremely fancy scrolled arms and shafts, and scalloped grips/bowls. They are marked on the outside of one of their finger rings with the Dublin Hibernia mark, and on the outside of their other finger ring with the Irish crowned harp (in the stringed style used in the 1770s), along with a probable maker\'s mark that is far too rubbed to identify. The reference book on nips, Eighteenth Century Silver Tea Tongs (whose author also has the silverteatongs website), cites several known Dublin makers of nips, and they all tended to make nips in this fancy style, so it would be difficult to say which one made this pair. The nips are over 5.25 inches long, weigh a very substantial 1.5 ounces, are very elaborately shaped and decorated, and they are in very good repaired condition (some play in the hinge). Almost all surviving nips have been repaired (due to their fragile designs), and there appears to be a well done repair on one arm of this pair (see the last picture). Please view the closeup pictures and judge for yourself (the nips have not been professionally polished). A very rare pair of extremely fancy Irish Georgian nips.

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