Mathomhaus

I would like to raise a question relative to the bronze gilt Imperial Russian oirder insignia that have been on the market since the early 1990's. 1. A bit of background: I have a large number of books on Faberge, many of which have chapters devoted to the hallmarks that that company used to mark their products. Even though I know that their marks were struck into the surface of the items, I have noticed that a number of the reference pictures - due to a quirk of the raking light used to make the detail of each hallmark stand out - actually make the mark look like it's somehow raised above the surface of the object. 2. Now to specifics: the majority of St. Anne and St. Stanislaus crosses made of bronze gilt that I've seen are marked Eduard and the name (along, sometimes, with other marks such as single letters) is on a small rectangle raised above the surface of the cross. 3. Here's my proposition: that dies to make copies of imperial russian orders were cut by someone, post-1918, who, working from photos, mistook the nature of the Eduard hallmark - perhaps in a reference photo - and cut his die with the hallmark raised above rather than sunk into the surface of the metal. I spent a couple of weeks in Russia last summer and was interested to note that many "high-end" gift shops and some museums, too, were busily flogging copies of virtually every degree of every Imperial Russian order. I did not examine any of them close-up because they all seemed to be made with acryillic enamel and were downright clunky in appearance... So , what I'm wondering is this: could there have been an earlier generation of Imperial copies made of bronze gilt and with hot enamel that were designed to be sold in gift shops and that those souvenir awards are what we were buying in the early nineties because we assumed that they were late WW I production? (After all, most everyone knows how the WW I combattant nations pulled the plug on the non-essential use of gold and silver during that war - so order insignia made of bronze gilt seemed to make sense...) Jim