Featured COLONIAL-ERA SILVER & MALACCA WALKING STICK

I bought this stick almost exactly two years ago. I got it cheap, from a friend who collects walking sticks, partially because the silver handle was extremely badly damaged - loads of dents and cracks, resin leaking out of it, and the whole deal, and partially because we've done a lot of business in the past, and I got a good deal on it.

Today, I finally got it repaired!

I picked it up from a friend of mine who's a silversmith / manufacturing jeweler. He was able to remove the handle, remove the pitch / resin inside the silver knob, punch out the dents, solder up all the cracks, straighten out all the nicks and nibbles, and then refill the knob with resin again and stick it back on.

Took him three days to do it!



Normally, I probably wouldn't bother with the expense of it, but I felt that this was worth repairing.

The stick is made of a shaft of Malacca cane, or Calamus Rattan, a plant native to Southeast Asia (in particular Malaysia, Singapore & Indonesia). Malacca cane was a popular material for walking sticks in the 1800s because it is extremely lightweight, but sturdy and strong...also, the honey-yellow colour is really unique.

The silver handle, with all the cutesy little Oriental decorations on it, was made in China, for export to the West.

A stick like this is perfect for my collection of Peranakan Chinese antiques, so I'm glad I got it repaired.

Full length is 36 inches, or exactly 3ft!

 

This is what the stick looked like when I bought it back in 2023...



As you can see - very badly crinkled, dented, and cracked. Also, really thick, heavy tarnish which I was only partially able to remove.

It looks much better, now!

 

Happy for you that you found someone to restore it so well for your collection! The design is really interesting.

I like the tarnish version (not counting other issues) but I am partial to a good oxidized silver. He did a great job though.

 

A fun Chinese Export piece. CES, Chinese Export Silver, does well in general.
And your silversmith did a great job restoring it.

Btw, Chinese pieces may have been made during a period when parts of Asia were colonised, but China wasn't colonised (except for Taiwan, Macao and Hongkong during certain periods).
Pieces like this were mostly made in the Canton area, which was very much under Chinese Imperial rule. The rattan canes were imported, both for domestic use and for export pieces like yours. I don't think Chinese people would be happy with the term 'colonial era' used for their export pieces.

Ditto. I think the oxidation in the textured background was deliberate, it usually is with Asian silver. But it will come back after a while. If it does, it is best to polish the raised parts only.

 

I was referring more to the period of general European colonialism, not any actual instances of China being colonised (even though that also happened, as you pointed out).

As for the tarnish, I'm not worried about that - as you say - it will return eventually anyway. Just gotta wait.

I had real doubts about ever getting this thing restored, but I wanted to try, and give it a shot at restoration. It was too pretty not to at least attempt it.

 

It was, and you were right to have it restored.

 

People get a lot of flak for restoring antiques, and say it "ruins the value" and "strips away the originality", but the brutal truth is - a lot of antiques around today would not survive if somebody hadn't bothered to restore them.

If I hadn't done it, then someone else later would've just thrown it out, because it would've cost to much for them to justify it.

It was a bit pricey (a couple hundred bucks) but I felt it was worthwhile to save it, and add it to my collection of Peranakan Cina stuff

 

Everybody wants something different with what they collect. If you are concerned about value then it might be a good point for someone to make, but if it's about how you want to see or use a piece, then no one else's opinion matters. I think this was a successful restoration.

 

The VALUE of the stick was never really my primary concern. It's a few bucks of silver, stuck onto a piece of cane. There's no real intrinsic value in that.

It was more the historical & cultural significance of the cane that was more important to me, and I knew if that the cane wasn't repaired, eventually, that significance would be lost, and that was what made me want to put the money into saving it.

As you said, the decorations on the sides are really unique. They were typical of the types of very Orientalised decorations added to silver walking-sticks by Chinese silversmiths so that they could sell them overseas to Europeans who wanted something 'exotic' - and that history would be lost if the silver just broke apart, and all the decorations and historical significance would be lost.

That was what I really wanted to save.