The inkstand was to have been offered in an Interiors-Spirit and Style at Christie's South Kensington rooms on September 17.
Its discovery appeared to be a triumph in that the silversmith is known only through his cutlery. Any elaborate Australian silverwork of this age is very rare. When inkstands turn up they tend to be made much later such as the 1870s.
Mr Ronan Sulich, the Australian representative for Christie's, said that it had been hinted that the inkstand was Anglo-Indian. It had been withdrawn from the auction.
Several supposedly early pieces of Australiana have been put into the Anglo-Indian category over the years.
The inkstand, expected to male £3,000 to £4,000 had been withdrawn on the recommendation of "the cognoscenti" whom he declined to name.
These did not included Sydney-based Sydney silver dealer Jolyon Warwick James or an Australian based collector whose collection has recently been catalogued and published. Word of the discovery had not yet reached either of them although catalogue details had been sent to Australia.
Apart from naming the maker, the inkstand was described in the catalogue as "in the late 18th century manner with bead borders, central swing handle, with two sunken pen depressions and three silver-mounted glass bottles.
"It has a pull out drawer with reeded border and is engraved with the initials TP." The marks are very crude.
Consisting of a lion, the monarchs head and the craftsman's initials, they all differ in some way from those generally known as belonging to Jacob Josephson, who was born in Breslau, Prussia in 1774, into a silver making family.
After moving to London, Josephson and his wife Emma were detained for paying for hotel accommodation with a forged one pound note and were found to have other forged notes in their possession. According to J. M. Houston's exhaustively researched and encyclopaedic Early Australian Silver The Houston Collection he arrived in Sydney in 1818, with his wife and two young sons joining him in 1820.
In 1821 he advertised that he made all kinds of jewellery and silversmith's work but in 1825 he fell on hard times augmented by the theft of much of his stock.
By 1827 he was in a debtors prison. The riches-to-rags story continued with speculation in land that enabled him to die a wealthy man.
Articles attributable to him other than cutlery are rare, which makes the consignment of the inkstand to the "difficult" basket all the more disappointing.
In 2008 an article in The Art Newspaper reported that a boomerang was withdrawn from sale by Christie's in London, after a leading historian and the National Museum of Australia disputed Christie's' claim that the object was likely to have been collected by Captain Cook on his first voyage in 1770.
The boomerang, which had estimated value at £40,000-60,000, was billed as the highlight of Christie's Exploration and Travel auction on September 25, 2008.
The boomerang appeared to have a near-watertight Cook family connection.
Another Australian lot, a walking stick, is expected to remain in the coming Christie's auction. It comprises various bands of native Australia woods such as Black Wood, Queensland Maple, and Rose She-Oak.
It bears the inscription "Presented to HRH The Prince of Wales by Mr. C. H. Tonkin, Secretary. Lake Macquarie Branch, Australian Natives Association, Newcastle, N.S.W." and is 91 cm long. The estimate is £2000 to £4000.
A catalogue note points out that in 1920 the Prince of Wales visited Australia on behalf of King George V. The visit was to thank the Australian people for the sacrifices and contributions made during the First World War. The Prince visited many and towns across Australia and his popularity was such that he became known as the 'digger prince'.