ORNAMENTAL MASTERPIECES such as chandeliers, writing cases, vases, and hollowware - soup tureens, sugar bowls, trays and coolers - call for the most demanding silverworking techniques: spinning, where a silver disk is pressed onto an appropriately shaped rotating wooden chuck with long-handed, polished steel tools; sinking, where a flat piece of silver is hammered into a concave hemispherical shape; repoussé, a process used to roughly emboss an object from the back or inside; chasing, where decorative lines and motifs are meticulously cut into the metal; soldering; burnishing and polishing…     NUMEROUS pieces, often first created by Jean-Baptiste Claude Odiot, include decorative figures which are works of art worthy of the finest sculptors: vestals, angels, sphinxes and fauns... Graceful compositions full of life and movement, a style which Odiot masters to perfection.   MANY MODERN-DAY PIECES created by the House of Odiot are identical, or similar, to masterpieces once commissioned by European nobility, the Imperial Family, the Russian, Bavarian and Romanian Courts... including those which form the sentimental heritage of the House of Odiot. For example, the silver christening cup designed by Thomas Jefferson, then the American Ambassador to Paris, and crafted by his friend Jean-Baptiste Claude Odiot. Or the famous "Pauline's breast", a shallow dish modelled on the Belle herself, and on which her emblem, a butterfly, is delicately poised.