Pigs may not have wings, but this one may fly out of Christie’s on Thursday during the Important American Silver sale. Estimated to sell between $100,000 and $150,000, this 1887 claret jug features a silver pig sitting on his haunches and squinting drunkenly at a dragonfly finial perched on his tipped snout. He looks bemused; his crinkled lips are loose, and he looks slightly cross-eyed. Stamped “Tiffany & Company,” the pig is an unusual find, according to the head of the silver department at Christie’s, Jeanne Sloane.

“There are thousands of claret jugs in the shape of ducks and birds and so on, but I’ve never seen anything so comically stylized,” Ms. Sloane said.

She is confident that the humorous quality and characteristic modeling come from the hand of Edward Chandler Moore, Tiffany’s chief silver designer from 1868, who was a leader of the Aesthetic Movement. “Several documented Moore pieces show animals in droll situations,” Ms. Sloane said.

The Aesthetic Movement, whose luminaries included Oscar Wilde and James McNeill Whistler, took place during the late 19th century and tended toward affectation and dandyism among its adherents. Its philosophy — “art for art’s sake” — encapsulated a reaction against the idea that art must have a purpose. Its quirky legacy of idiosyncratic objects, often in mixed materials like silver, copper, and gold, can be seen as the origin of camp.

As a trendsetter in America, Moore was also a friend of Christopher Dresser, the prolific and influential English designer. Tiffany & Co.commissioned Dresser to bring back important Japanese art objects from that country in 1877. The objects were used by Tiffany designers as inspiration for shapes and materials.

Moore won a gold medal at the Paris 1878 exhibition, and his designs for Tiffany & Co. were a powerful influence on the young Louis Comfort Tiffany. A passionate collector of Islamic glass and metalwork, Moore left nearly 900 pieces of his collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

But rather than having an Islamic influence, the claret jug for sale has a Japonesque influence, Ms. Sloane said. The pig was created from two hand-hammered, repoussé halves, and the artisans worked from a clay model. Using small hand tools, they chased the silver to create the realistic ripples of fat and hairy detailing that make the animal’s body so lifelike. The arching dragonfly finial, a typical Moore element, is probably cast.

“You needed rich patrons for cabinet pieces like this, meant for display rather than heavy usage, and demand at auction exceeds supply. There just aren’t that many around,” Ms. Sloane said of its high estimate. “Wine accessories are a hot collecting category.”