Category Archives: Antique and Vintage Silverware

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All Aboard the S.S. Pap Boat! 222-year-old Georgian Silver Feeding Vessel…

“All Aboard the…what?”

Pap boat.

This thing:

In use largely in the late 1600s, 1700s and early 1800s, pap boats were small, shallow, boat-shaped feeding vessels used to deliver pap to the mouths of babes and sucklings. They died out in the mid-1800s when feeding-bottles (similar to the kind we have today) were invented. Sterling silver christening sets including a porringer (small bowl), spoon, fork, knife and sometimes a silver mug, as well, which became very popular in the Victorian era, also saw the decline of the pap boat. As a result, in the 21st century, they can be pretty rare pieces to get your hands on.

“What the hell is ‘pap’?”

In its oldest form, ‘pap’ means ‘breast’, ‘teat’ or ‘nipple’. By the 1700s, ‘pap’ also came to refer to a sort of sweet, liquidy gruel or porridge – basically baby-food – which was fed to infants and toddlers.

Recipes for pap typically included milk, flour, butter, sugar, and sometimes softened bread or breadcrumbs (for added bulk and nomminess!). Pap was thought to be soothing, tasty, and especially for babies – especially easy to digest. if babies were ill, medicine might be mixed into the pap formula so that the tot could take its dosage with minimal fuss.

Dating the Pap Boat

Dating this small piece of very old silverware was a real challenge. The actual date letter on the row of punched-out hallmarks was long gone. But there was still enough of the sovereign’s head duty mark to identify it as George III.

Duty marks on English silver came in starting in 1784. They died out in 1890. Marks changed over the reigns of the monarchs, changing marks every time the old ones either wore out as the monarch’s reign lengthened, or when the king died and another one replaced him. The duty mark on this piece of silver was identified as 1795. That doesn’t necessarily mean that’s when the boat was made and marked, that’s just when the new duty-stamp was introduced. Without anything else to go on, however, I’m dating this piece at 1795.

 
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Stopping to Smell The Roses: A George III Silver Vinaigrette

I am a firm believer that products made in the 1700s and 1800s, and during the first half of the 20th century, were, and are, of far better quality and were held to much higher standards of manufacture, than anything made today.

It is the chief reason why I love antiques.

Today, I’m here to talk about this:

This tiny little object (tiny? You could fit two of them in a matchbox!) is one of the half-dozen or so things which I purchased during my latest antiques-bargain-hunting scrounge-fest. It is a vinaigrette.

“…it’s a what??”

It is a vinaigrette.

“A what…?”

A vinaigrette! It would’ve originally held a tiny sponge impregnated with perfume (to provide sweetness), and vinegar (for pungency), in order to mask offensive or unpleasant smells and odours – hence ‘vinaigrette’ – it has nothing to do with that salad you’re munching on!

Vinaigrettes were invented in the 1600s, but were not really made out of silver until the 1700s. They are largely considered an artifact of the Georgian era (1714-1837), although they were also made during the Victorian era, albeit in increasingly…uh…decreasing…numbers.

Why are you writing about it?

Chiefly because to me, vinaigrettes are one of the best examples (apart from watches) of the capabilities of mankind.

This thing is microscopically small – almost literally! It blows my mind that something as intricate as this was made BY HAND. The silver sheeting was pressed, shaped, punched, cast and filed by hand. The tiny, tiny hinges were rolled and folded by hand. The grille was measured and pierced by hand, with amazing precision, enough to include little flowers in it!

The flowers-and-leaves engraved decoration on the lid is eye-wateringly detailed, in a space smaller than a modern postage-stamp!

The skill, the patience, the experience, the steady-handedness, and the phenomenal artistry that went into something so unbelievably small, really takes my breath away.

“The inside’s gold!…I thought you said this thing was silver!?”

It is! But the inside is gilt (basically – gold-plated). This was to prevent the acid in the vinegar or perfume, from corroding the silver. For all its luster and glory, silver has surprising weak-points: it’s very susceptible to acid and salt, and various foodstuffs like meat, seafood, and certain vegetables. It’s one of the reasons why silver was gilt, or had glass liners inserted in various pieces of silver dinnerware – to protect the silver and prolong its life.

It’s also, by the way, why in those period drama TV shows, the servants are forever polishing silver – because the use it was put to 100, 200 years ago, meant that it tarnished very easily, especially when it was exposed to the heat and smoke and dust of gas-mantles, candles, and oil-fired table-lamps.

“Who Used Vinaigrettes?”

Everyone! Both men and women used vinaigrettes, although some models or sizes of vinaigrettes were aimed more, or less, at each gender. For example, a vinaigrette which had a built-in snuffbox would more likely have been used by a man. A vinaigrette with a heavy floral motif, or which was extremely small (yes, they do get even SMALLER than this, believe it or not!), would’ve been used by a woman.

They existed at a time when the world…and the people which inhabited it…smelled very different to how we do today. Standards of personal hygiene were questionable at best, and although the streets did not reek of petrol-fumes and exhaust smoke, they were nonetheless polluted with the stench emanating from a rather different kind of horsepower. In many ways, the story of the vinaigrette is the story of human hygiene.

As hot water became more readily available with coal-fired boilers, piped, running water, cast-iron cookstoves and soap became increasingly cheap (it had previously been taxed to the hilt in Georgian times), men and women found themselves much more able to bathe in comfort, and take bathing as a pleasure rather than as an unpleasant and shameful chore. As more and more people bathed, the need to mask unpleasant smells with your own personal scent-box declined, leading to the eventual end of vinaigrette-manufacturing at the turn of the 20th century.

“So really…how small are they?”

Well, this’ll give you some idea…

…here we’ve got two vinaigrettes on top of a standard box of matches. They were made bigger than this, but most were designed to be small, pocket-sized things, just large enough to hold under your nose and take a whiff from.

 
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Victorian-era Dutch Silver Basket – A Lesson in Historical Research!

The hallmarking of silver for the purposes of quality control and fraud-protection has been actively practiced for hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of years, going all the way back to Medieval times and beyond. Largely a European practice, countries as diverse as Russia, England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany have had all manner of hallmarking systems which have lasted in their respective countries for generations. This diversity of hallmarking is fascinating, useful, and at times, frustrating!

European-style hallmarking, which typically consisted of a four-mark system, was established in the 12th and 13th centuries, gradually expanding both in scope and detail as the Medieval progressed. Eventually, the four marks which most pieces of European silver were stamped with became the standard: The purity mark, the assay mark, the maker’s mark, and the date mark.

Although there were attempts to standardise this system, the truth is that it varied significantly from country to country, and even city to city or province to province within countries, and even within a single country there could be several different systems and methods in place. Imagine what a piece of detective-work it becomes, then, when you’re trying to identify the marks on a piece of antique silverware!

The Piece in Question

Here it is:

Cute, huh?

It’s a mid-19th century Dutch silver candy-basket (what they called back in the Victorian era, a ‘bonbon basket’; ‘bonbon’ being the name given to bite-sized individual chocolates or candies). These were usually sold in sets (pairs were most common), although you can get them on their own. Little baskets like this, which come in all shapes and sizes and designs, were extremely common throughout the second half of the 1800s, and into the first few decades of the 20th century.

They died out when dining-habits and styles changed to something rather less formal, more like what we have today, but in the 1860s, 70s and 80s, baskets like these could be found on any number of higher-end dining tables tempting people with chocolates, after-dinner mints and candied fruits after their main meal of the evening.

Researching the Hallmarks

So much for the item and what it is. How about those hallmarks, eh?

As I suspected it would, the piece came with four hallmarks: A purity mark, an assay mark, a date-letter and a maker’s mark.

The easiest one to identify was the purity or fineness mark. It was easy to identify because it was what’s called a ‘Lion Passant’ (‘passing lion’).

The Lion Passant has been a symbol for silver in Britain for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Except, the piece wasn’t British!

The mark was a Lion Passant inside a hexagon, with the number ‘2’ underneath it. Typing this into Google revealed that it was actually a Dutch silver mark. A lion passant with ‘1’ is the higher grade of silver (about 93%), whereas the lion passant with ‘2’ is the second grade of silver, the more common (in Europe, anyway) 83% grade.

While Britain usually used the 92.5% grade (what we call ‘sterling grade’), most European countries, for centuries, used a slightly lower grade of around 80-85% (what some people call ‘continental grade’). This was largely thought to be for reasons of durability. The silver wasn’t as pure, but the piece made from it would be stronger and more resilient.

Having identified the piece as Dutch, the next step was to identify where the piece was hallmarked, and when.

Identifying the Assay Mark

it’s been the law in Europe for centuries that you cannot sell a piece of silver if it hasn’t been assayed (tested and marked) prior to sale. And that’s still the law today. Assaying and marking are traditionally done at assay offices. One of the oldest surviving assay offices in the world is Goldsmiths’ Hall in London…from which the term ‘hall-mark’ comes from!

This Dutch candy dish would’ve been hallmarked by officials at an assay hall just like any other piece of manufactured silver in Europe, and I was curious to find out where. Fortunately there’s a pretty straightforward way of finding this out: The Assay Mark.

Two of the four marks, struck to the base. One on the right, one on the left. The power of the lenses needed to help carve these microscopic hallmarks really blows one’s mind…

Dutch assay marks all rather look the same. They’re all the same mark: The head of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, among other things. The way in which they differ is that every Minerva Head mark has a different letter stamped into it, to denote the town of assay. My piece had a microscopic ‘c’ stamped into it. This means that it was assayed and marked in the city of s’Gravenhage…better known by the Dutch people as Den Haag…or to English-speakers as…’The Hague’.

That’s pretty cool, huh?

The Last Two Marks

Unfortunately, finding out the maker’s mark wasn’t possible. The records simply didn’t exist. However, the date-letter was clear enough, and with a chart to hand, I was able to narrow it down to 1849, which makes this piece Victorian in era. I don’t think I’ll ever find out who made this piece; the maker’s mark was a ‘B’ inside of a shield cartouche, with two dots over the ‘B’, a bit like an umlaut – although I don’t think that’s what it is; umlaut are only used over vowels, not consonants. Either way, the details seem to have been lost to history. Maybe one day I’ll find out, who knows!?

 
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Antique Norwegian Silver Shot Glass (1871)

I’m not sure what happened in Norway in the early 1870s, but whatever it was, someone felt the need to commemorate it.

I picked up this little silver shot-glass or beaker while I was at the local flea-market last week. It was in reasonable condition, it was cheap, and it had a lot of pretty engraving on it. It had a series of hallmarks struck to the base, but beyond the fact that it was silver, the seller couldn’t tell me a thing about it.

Decoding antiques can be a real challenge, and this shot-glass is a classic example of that. Even without the label on the item declaring it to be silver, I had already guessed, given the tarnishing, but also, the symbols stamped on the base:

Given the layout, the number of them, and the inconsistencies in the stampings, I deduced that they were hand-struck hallmarks, but not of any kind which I recognised. On a hunch, I bought the shot-glass, took it home, cleaned it up a bit and pressed out the dents, and then started researching the marks.

The cup came with a hand-engraved inscription on the rim, and translating this was my first clue. It read:

“Erindring af mine Brodre“. Typing this into Google Search revealed it to be Norwegian: “In Remembrance of my Brothers“. After that, I started researching Norwegian hallmarks.

European hallmarks have a very distinct pattern. They typically come in groups of four, or five. A set of marks on a piece of silver will normally consist of an assay mark, a date letter, a maker’s mark, and a purity or fineness mark. Depending on where the piece was made and marked, it might also include import or export marks, taxation marks, etc.

The first mark to be uncovered was the seven dots in an oval (on the right). This was the assay mark for the town of Bergen, in Norway.

The second mark I deciphered was the ’13 1/3′. This was a reference to 13.3/16 LOTH.

In the 1700s and 1800s, European silver was divided into grades called lothiges (commonly shortened to just ‘loth’). Silver was graded according to purity on a sixteen-point scale. It started at 16, then went down to 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, and finally, 10 loth. Apart from Norway, the loth system was also commonly used by Germany, Austria and Prussia.

From top to bottom, these grades were:

1000/1000 (16),
937/1000 (15),
875/1000 (14),
812/1000 (13),
750/1000 (12),
687/1000 (11),
650/1000 (10). 

So, I had a roughly 81% purity, silver shot glass made in Bergen, in Norway. But how old was it? Here I turned to two more marks. One was ‘6M’, and the other ’71’. These stood for June (the sixth month) of 1871.

The last mark were the initials PD, which made up the maker’s mark. The trail of research ran cold here, but I had enough to know all the basic facts about the shot glass. It might be small, and old, and battered, but I think it’s beautiful. After all, it’s not every day you can claim to own a piece of antique Norwegian silver!

 

 
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Buried Treasure: My Very Own ‘Armada Dish’!

Just because it’s what they do, doesn’t mean that they know it all! And if you’re patient, you can get your hands on a really nice, and interesting, piece of silver! That’s what happened to me yesterday!

Nobody at my local auction-house knew what this curious little…dish…plate…bowl…thingy…was. As a result, it sold for next to nothing, and I was able to nab it at a great price. I was extremely skeptical of the description of it in the catalogue, which simply said: “Sterling Silver Ash Tray“.

One look at this item told me that it was quite obviously not an ash tray. The shape was all wrong. And there were no grooves to rest cigarettes.  I mean you could use it as an ash tray…and you could use a Gucci handbag to tip horse-manure onto the garden…but that doesn’t mean you should! This weird little piece of silver made me wonder exactly what it was and who made it and why.

Unusually, it was a modern piece of silver. It’s from 1997, according to the hallmarks, and it was assayed in Sheffield. Researching the company that made it eventually told me that it was something called an ‘Armada Plate’.

…A what?

Yeah I’d never heard of it either, and despite a lot of research, all I could find out was that there were loads of these things for sale online in various sizes, some larger than mine, some smaller. But none of them told me what the hell an ‘Armada Plate’ was. So, I went to Wikipedia to find out…

The Amazing Armada Service

In the 1580s and 90s, a thirty-one piece sterling silver dinner service was amassed by Sir Christopher Harris, and his wife Mary. Among other things, Sir Christopher was an MP, and Vice-Admiral for the county of Devon, and was charged with the protection of Devon by attacks from the sea.

The service became known as the ‘Armada Service’ because it was made to commemorate the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. The date-letters on the silver plates and platters range from the 1580s up to around 1601.

Either way, the famous, 31-piece service was a point of pride for the Harris family – Sir Christopher after all, was familiar with both Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh, so he definitely moved in some pretty impressive circles!

What is known is that the service was passed down through the Harris family until 1645. At the time of the English Civil War, the service was buried to hide it from the Cromwellian puritans, who needed silver for their war-effort. It remained hidden for nearly two centuries, until it was rediscovered in 1827 by farm-laborers who, of all things, were digging a hole to store potatoes!

The service was returned to the Harris family, who took custody of it for over fifty years, until it was sold at auction in 1885…by which time it had dropped from 31 pieces to 26 pieces…exactly what happened to the other five is unknown.

Either way, the pieces were sold at auction in 1885, and again some decades later, in 1910. In 1992, the 26-piece service was acquired by (and remains with) the British Museum.

But what happened to the other pieces?

Funnily enough – some of them have been discovered!

Through means unknown, some of them had ended up in the States! This was only discovered in 2009! This means that there is now a 28-piece Armada service in the world. However, the last three pieces, to make it the complete 31 once more, are still missing…

The Little Silver Plate

Alright, that was really interesting…but what’s that got to do with a little silver plate?

Well actually, the Armada Service is so famous, not just for its size, age and the fact that part of it is still missing, but because it represented a high-point of late-Elizabethan silversmithing. Its simple style and beauty, and the fact that it’s survived this long largely intact, have made it an object of fascination, and therefore, highly desirable.

Modern copies of individual pieces from the Armada Service are actively manufactured today by British silversmiths, and you can buy them online relatively easily, in sizes anywhere from a couple of inches, all the way up to seven inches in diameter! My own little plate is 3.75 inches across. It may not be a piece of 400-year-old Elizabethan silver, but it’s fun to own something that pays homage to one of the most famous silver-collections in the world!

 
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Georgian Scent-Box – My Antique Silver Vinaigrette

In going back over the hundreds of posts I’ve made in this blog since I started it in 2009, which is coming onto eight years ago (yikes!), I suddenly realised that I’d never done one about one of my most-prized antiques. My teeny little vinaigrette box. So that’s what we’re covering today! Here it is:

This thing is really small. I mean really, really, really small! You could pack four or five of these into a standard matchbox without much trouble at all. That’s how tiny it is! The entire thing is solid sterling silver, and it is indeed, very old. It is the oldest piece of antique silver which I currently own, and almost certainly the smallest. So, what is it?

Antique Vinaigrettes

Vinaigrette-boxes, or simply just vinaigrettes were very popular during the 17-and-1800s, from the early Georgian era up through the end of the Victorian era. They were almost always little silver boxes, with gilt interiors, with pierced grilles and little sponges inside.

The sponges held a mixture of perfume or essential oils mixed with a drop or two of vinegar. This mixture created a sweet-smelling but also pungent aroma, designed to mask the stench of unwashed bodies, horse-manure, coal-smoke and other nasal assaults common during the 18th and 19th centuries. Since vinegar is acidic, vinaigrettes were always gilt (gold-lined or gold-plated) to prevent the acid from burning through the silver with which the boxes were made.

Vinaigrettes came in various sizes, from minuscule ones like this, to much larger ones about the size of a matchbox. They also came in a wide array of shapes, styles and designs. Those with strange, interesting, rare or novel designs are especially collectible.

The Hallmarks

This particular vinaigrette has the hallmarks of Thomas Spicer, for Birmingham, in 1823, and the duty mark of George IV, who reigned from 1820-1830. It also has its original sponge inside it! It’s a bit dry and crusty, but I didn’t want to throw it out.

Hallmarks on silverware change over time. Not just in style, size and shape, but also in the number of hallmarks. Knowing when different hallmarks were introduced and when they were discontinued is one way of dating a piece. This can be important when the item is particularly old, and the original set of hallmarks might have been polished out or unreadable. The duty mark for British silver was introduced in the 1700s and discontinued in 1890.

And here’s the vinaigrette fully-opened, with the sponge removed. You can see the full set of hallmarks here. Five in total: Maker’s mark of TS (Thomas Spicer), assay mark of an anchor (Birmingham), fineness mark of a Lion Passant (Sterling Silver), the date-letter (Z) for 1823, and finally – a duty mark of a monarch’s head (George IV). The TS maker’s mark has been repeated on both sides of the box.

The Fall of the Vinaigrette

Vinaigrettes died out in the Victorian era. When the soap-tax was repealed in the…1850s, I believe it was…it suddenly became much easier to wash onself, and one’s clothing. This moderate improvement in personal hygiene and laundry meant that for once, people didn’t stink so much. And if they did, cologne, scent of perfume was used to mask the smell. By the end of the century, the vinaigrette had pretty much become a museum piece.

 
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Making your Mark: Studying Silver and Reading Hallmarks

Silver has been valued by mankind for thousands of years, along with its big brother, gold. Silver has had a big impact on our lives and our language, although we don’t always realise it. A silver spoon. Silverware. The Pound Sterling. A hallmark of quality. Up to scratch. Acid test. These are all expressions or phrases which have their history in mankind’s love affair with silver. So, what is silver and what are we looking at in this posting?

Silver is an elemental metal. In this posting I’ll be covering what silver is used for, the various grades of silver, and how to identify silver hallmarks. Let’s begin!

What Is Silver?

Silver is an elemental metal – a metal that appears in nature – and has been used for thousands of years to make everything from coins to cups to candlesticks. Silver can be melted down and reformed, it can be used to make almost anything, and it has been mined everywhere from China to Europe, England to South America. For centuries, conspicuous ownership and use of silver was seen as a status symbol. Grand households could, and did, amass great quantities of silverware – everything from shaving scuttles to candlesticks, ice-buckets to chamber pots!

What are Hallmarks and Why do they Exist?

Hallmarks are the little symbols, pictures, letters and numbers stamped onto the little (and big!) pieces of silver that we buy from places like antiques shops, jewelry shops, watchmakers and silversmiths. They have existed for centuries and centuries of history, in one form or another and are generally recognised as being the oldest regulated form of buyer-protection in the world.

…why?

It is impossible to tell, just by looking at a piece of gold, or silver, what level of purity the metal is. It could be 10 percent, 20 percent, 40 percent or 90 percent purity. It could be solid silver, pure silver, silver plated, or not silver at all! So, how do you know?

You don’t! Not unless you have it tested. But to have everything you own tested and checked all the time would be a pain in the ass! Right? As Yente would say: “Of course right!”

The Assay Office

Because it would be impractical to have every single piece that a person buys, tested for silver purity, the way to ensure consistency, honesty and proper regulation was to introduce a system whereby every piece of silver which could be legally sold, had to be independently tested and indelibly marked as being made of silver.

Enter the Assay Office.

An Assay Office was the institution or body which regulated the testing and marking of silver and gold. The oldest surviving one in Great Britain is the Goldsmiths’ Hall in London, which dates back to the 14th century! It was made law in England and France in the 13th and 14th centuries, that all silver had to contain hallmarks – symbols that swore to the fact that the metal had been independently tested for purity – before it could be legally sold on the open market.

Goldsmiths’ Hall in London. This building (or rather, the original built on this site; this is the third such Goldsmiths’ Hall) gave us the origin of the term “Hallmark”.

It is from the Goldsmiths’ Hall in London which the term ‘hallmark’ originates. They still carry out hallmarking services there to this day.

Hallmarks are not only found on silver – they’re also found on gold and platinum, but in this posting, I’m concentrating on silver marks.

How old are Hallmarks?

Hallmarking is the oldest form of consumer protection in the world that still exists today in something approximating its original form. It was established in the FOURTH CENTURY (300s), and more or less the same form of hallmarking has existed, in one way or another, ever since.

Hallmarking as we recognise it today was first standardised in the medieval period, starting in France in 1275, and then in England, in 1300. The types and numbers of hallmarks rose and fell over time, depending on the laws and regulations of the era. A traditional set of European hallmarks will be anywhere from four to six in number, by which they can be dated, identified and certified as being gold, or silver.

Throughout the succeeding centuries, extra hallmarks and standards were introduced, such as creating proper, well-regulated assay offices, assay marks, date letters, and maker’s marks, in addition to simple purity or ‘fineness’ marks.

Types of Hallmarks

There are a number of different hallmarks in the world, and they vary wildly by country, but there are only about half a dozen specific *types* of marks, that you really need to be aware of. I’m going to talk about them here.

Fineness Mark

The first mark you’re likely to find on a piece of silver is the fineness mark. This mark indicates the purity or ‘fineness’ of the silver, whether it’s 750/1,000, 800, 900, 925, 935, 950, etc. There are two types of fineness marks: Traditional fineness marks (usually represented by animal symbols) and numerical fineness marks (called ‘milesimal’ fineness marks). Traditional fineness marks are more old fashioned and stylistic; milesimal fineness marks are a more modern method of marking.

Degrees of fineness vary from country to country, as each nation or continent has a minimum standard of silver purity which may be classified as “solid silver”. In Britain, ‘solid silver’ has to be at least 92.5% purity (called ‘sterling silver’). The lowest legal grade in Europe is 800/1000 silver (80% pure), which is enforced in countries like Germany. Consequently, 800 silver is generally known as ‘Continental’ silver. Countries like Switzerland have a slightly higher grade, which is 935 silver (93.5% pure). For a short period in Britain, the standard was 950 (95% pure), although that was discontinued in 1720.

The traditional fineness mark in Britain is the symbol of a lion walking to the left, called a ‘Lion Passant’, which indicates Sterling Silver (92.5% pure). A higher grade of silver (95%) was traditionally marked with the picture of a woman, sitting down, with a shield at her feet (Lady Britannia). This grade of silver is known as Britannia Silver.

Britannia-grade silver was discontinued in Britain in 1720, because while it was a higher grade of silver purity, the lack of enough alloying copper made the metal far too soft to work properly and silversmiths were complaining that their finished pieces were suffering in quality as a result. So the old sterling standard was reintroduced in the 1720s. It has remained the standard in Britain ever since.

Assay/City/Town Mark

I’ve always called these things assay marks. Some texts call them City Marks, Town Marks…whatever…

The assay mark is the official hallmark of the assay office which assayed (tested) the piece of silver that you’ve got in your hand. This mark on your silver tells you that the piece was independently tested and certified to be (or be above) a specific purity of silver.

Assay marks still in use in Britain today include the Castle (for Edinburgh), the Anchor (for Birmingham), the Rose (for Sheffield. Previously, this was a Crown), and the Leopard’s Head (for London). There used to be several assay offices scattered throughout Britain, but now only a handful remain. Silver pieces with the marks of defunct assay offices on them can command high prices due to their comparative rarity.

Maker’s Mark

Compulsory in Britain since the mid-1300s is the Maker’s Mark. The Maker’s Mark is usually the initials of the silversmith, or the company, which manufactured the piece. Maker’s marks are highly individual. As some initials can be repeated between makers, different sizes, styles, fonts, and arrangements of letters were used to make each mark recognizable. Different styles, shapes and sizes of borders around the marks also helped to make them stand out, and be identified by the general public.

Date Letter

The date letter system was introduced so that people would know how old their silver was. Each assay office would have bordered sets of letters in alphabetical order, and these were used to mark each piece sent through the office to act as a date reference later on. Dating pieces can be tricky – letters changed all the time – capitals, lowercase, italics, serifs, sans serifs, different border-shapes…the list goes on. And then there’s the added factor that each set of date letters is unique to the specific assay office which marked the piece. You can’t use London date letters to date a piece assayed in Birmingham, for example – it wouldn’t work.

Duty Mark

From 1784, until 1890, an extra mark was required on British silver called a duty mark. The presence of this mark indicated that the required silver duty (silver tax) had been paid to the Crown. The Duty Mark was represented by a profile portrait of the reigning monarch of the day. There were four duty marks: George III, George IV, William IV, and Queen Victoria. The presence, or absence of a duty mark can help date the age of your piece.

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A full set of traditional English hallmarks. L-R: [D&LS] (David & Lionel Spiers. Makers). [I] – date-letter for 1885. [Anchor] – for Birmingham. [Lion Passant] – for Sterling Silver. [Monarch’s Head] – Duty Mark.

Milesimal Marks

These days, the most common type of hallmark that you’ll see on modern silver is what’s called a ‘milesimal’ fineness mark. These marks or stampings indicate the purity or ‘fineness’ of the silver in a numerical manner, instead of a symbolic manner (such as the Lion Passant).

Common milesimal marks include:

950 – 950/1000, or Britannia Silver.
935 – 935/1000, or Swiss silver.
925 – 925/1000, or Sterling Silver.
900 – 900/1000, or 90% silver by purity.
800 – 800/1000, or 80% silver by purity. AKA German Silver or Continental Silver.

You sometimes see silver purity below 800, although this tends to be rare.

One mark you might sometimes see (exclusively in American silver) is the term “COIN”, “COIN SILVER” or “FINE COIN”. This indicates that the silver piece in your hands came from the melting down of a whole heap of old, out-of-circulation silver coins. The standard purity is usually 800.

When is Silver Not Silver?

Silver has been prized by man for centuries – its colour, its sheen, its sparkle – have all made it desirable. But its price has not. To this end, silver-imitating metals have long been popular silver-substitutes, and craftsmen have often made items out of such metals to sell to people who would like something in their homes or lives that looks like silver…but which isn’t…most likely because they can’t afford the real thing.

Pewter

Another white metal which has been used, if not prized, throughout history, is one called pewter. Pewter is a mix of copper and tin, in this case, high levels of tin and low levels of copper; in older times, lead was also included. The opposite (high levels of copper, low levels of tin) gives you bronze.

Pewter has a darker, greyer colour than silver, but was nonetheless used for things as diverse as candlesticks, spoons, cups, mugs, flagons, plates, bowls and many other things. It’s sometimes plated in silver and it may have the letters ‘EPBM’ stamped on some silver-plated pewter items.

EPBM is Electroplated Britannia Metal – This means that it is silver-plated pewter. It is NOT Britannia SILVER, which is 95% silver by purity.

Nickel-Silver

Another common metal which is sometimes mistaken for silver is a material known as Nickel-Silver, which despite the name, doesn’t have any silver in it at all! Nickel-Silver is made out of an alloy of nickel, copper and zinc – it has the superficial appearance of silver, at a glance, but contains no real silver in the mix, unless it’s been silver-plated.

Nickel silver is usually marked “N.S.”. Electroplated nickel silver is “EPNS”. It’s also called German Silver, and alpacca, among many other names.

Deciphering Silver Marks

Finding out what the marks on your silver mean can be challenging. Two great online resources for finding out what they are, are the following websites:

Silver Maker’s Marks for British & Irish Silver

This isn’t an infallible site, but it lists the marks of almost every British and Irish silversmith. Useful for finding out who made your piece.

925-1000.com

The online silver encyclopedia. Not always the easiest of resources to navigate, I’ve found, but the information it provides is good, once you’ve tracked it down.