An attractively hand carved antique silver Bombilla from South America. Hallmarked (600) and marked ‘Garantida’. These were (and still are) used to drink the health giving tea “yerba maté”.

The maté is sucked through the small perforations in the end of the tube so that the infusion passes but not the dried leaves (yerba) – like a straw. The third world equivalent to a sick syphon. Difficult to date but probably turn of the 19th or early 20th Century.

• From the Phisick collection