SAMOVAR Tea Urns At South Coast Antiques & Gallery, Ocean Springs, MSSAMOVAR Tea Urns At South Coast Antiques & Gallery, Ocean Springs, MS

Samovars, you see these curiosities in antique shops all over America but few customers or dealers know exactly what they are or how they work.  We have a few in my shop as well, but I have lived in countries where samovars are in common use and have owned and collected samovars for decades.  I thought the subject for this blog might be about these misunderstood items.  I won’t go into great detail but just cover the high points.

SAMOVAR HISTORY
Samovars directly evolved from the Russian sbiten brewing pot, which was a large metal teapot, which had an internal boiler. 
Sbiten (Russian, сбитень) is a traditional honey-based beverage consumed during the long winter months and sometimes jam or wine was added.  It was a popular drink for a thousand years in Russia and was not replaced with tea and coffee until the 1890s.

It was fairly easy to add the teapot holder to the top of the sbiten maker and the modern samovar was born.  The first recorded samovar makers were the Russian from the late 1770s.  Tula alone eventually had dozens of major samovar makers in that city alone.

The earliest forms of samovars were in the shape of a barrel lying on its side and by the 1820s urn or pot shapes began to take form.  One reason for the teapot on the top of the samovar was to keep the tea concentrate hot, which could be a task in the freezing cold of Russian winters.

Samovars caught on and spread quickly to the tea drinking central Asia and the Middle East such as Persia and Turkey and they made their own variations of samovars.  Interestingly, samovars never took hold in China however or in tea-loving England.

HOW THEY WORK
Samovars can be just humble copper urns to finely engraved and plated or enameled status symbols.  Some costly samovar sets were made of silver.  A samovar, no matter the shape or size always have an outer jacket that is the body of the samovar and inside a boiler and chimney.  Above the chimney is a bracket to hold the teapot for the tea concentrate. 

Drop hot coals down the chimney and fill up the water reservoir with water.  On the tea pot bracket put your tea pot filled with loose tea and water.  Eventually the water boils in the samovar and the tea concentrate in the little teapot is ready.

To make tea, just decant boiling water into your teacup and add concentrate tea from the little teapot.  Add lots of sugar and you have tea the old fashioned way!  Newer samovars can be electric, but the best tea is made from the old-fashioned coal samovar.

SAMOVAR VALUES
Samovar values are highly variable based on condition, shape, age and quality of embellishment.  A modest samovar in fair but serviceable shape made from copper or brass with no plating might set you back only $100.  A finer samovar in good condition with good engraving and plating would be double to triple.  A very fine samovar could easily top a thousand dollars, which would have silver plating and all the matched accouterments and original tray intact.  A solid silver samovar with enamel work made by a master would be rare indeed.  One should expect to pay in the thousands of dollars for one of this type that was fit for royalty.

Large Persian Samovar At South Coast Antiques & Gallery, Ocean Springs, MS

 

 

 

 

Very Large Copper Turkish Tea House Samovar At South Coast Antiques & Gallery, Ocean Springs, MS

Small Brass Samovar At South Coast Antiques & Gallery, Ocean Springs, MS