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Good afternoon. Can someone please help identify the mark and help with the year of manufacture for this item. The owner was born at London in 1917 and left for Canada in 1946. We are not sure if this is sterling or if it is plated. Any and all help is appreciated.
Thanks Phil Vogler
Nova Scotia
Canada
(admin photo edit - remember to use the Preview feature)
The marks on French powder jars (or vanity jars) can be extremely tiny, so if at first you don't succeed in finding more hallmarks, give it another try.
Recently I found a tall square-shaped French glass jar with sterling (950) lid, and you could barely see the hallmark, it was the smallest hallmark I have ever yet seen, really tiny.
This losenge-shaped mark is a French mark for silversmith used from 1798 to now.
Thus, it should be silver (at least 800/1000, could be 925/1000 or 950/1000 standard)
The silversmith letters seems to be L P ? but I could not identify the symbol between the two letters.
As previouly sugeested by other contributors, there should be at least one other mark (standard mark), probably a minerva-head with a small number, but the mark can indeed be tiny or nearly erased. Have a closer look.
For your information, the crown it a "crown of count", but please note that the use of crown in French heraldic is not as "strict" as in UK for example. The initial owner may have been an aristocrat (or not !), and was maybe a "chevalier" or a "baron" for ex., and not a "comte"... ;-)
Several confusing remarks have crept into this post. France had 2 silver standards through the nineteenth century, and the twentieth century until 1972: 800 standard and 950 standard. Neither of those are sterling standard, which is 925. The sterling 925 standard was not adopted in France until 1972, in accordance with European Community legislation. Therefore, saying that an object is French sterling 950 is inaccurate and confusing. Saying the object in this post could be 925 standard silver is inaccurate.
The only way to tell the silver standard of this item is to see the silver standard mark, which the OP has not shown yet. It will be either 800 standard or 950 standard, unless the object was manufactured after 1972, which is doubtful in this case given the provenance of the object. It would be unlikely that the silver standard mark would be a Minerva head on a light object of this kind; it usually would be a crab or boar's head if the object dates post-1838. Best to wait for word from the OP.
The coronet is that of a French count. To say it could be that of a baron is misleading, as barons have their own coronets. I would be interested in any references comparing use of coronets in France and Britain, in particular referring to light-handed use of coronets in France.
What we have now is a lot of speculation, mostly misleading. Best to wait for word from the OP.
