Could use help with British hallmarks

[Tonomachi]

First post and having a hard time posting two images at a time. So I have a single image of the hallmarks for a small silver dish or ash tray. This first hallmark means London according to a couple of Internet British silver mark reference sites I visited. I could use help with the second (maker) and third hallmark. Thanks in advance.

[dognose]

Hi,

Welcome to the Forum.

Not sure but the mark has similarities with marks used by the Goldfeder Silverware Company, later Birmingham Silver Co., Inc. of Yalesville, Connecticut. Hopefully someone with better knowledge of American marks will confirm/deny.

Trev.

[2209patrick]

Hello.

Don't think that mark was used by the Birmingham Silver Company or Goldfeder.
Their marks always included a distinctive crown.

http://www.925-1000.com/silverplate_G.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Pat.

[dognose]

Hi Pat,

Thanks for the correction, my thoughts were that the mark was similar in design to that of Goldfeder/Birmingham as shown in Rainwaters, and that it may have been connected in some vague way.



Regards Trev.

[Ahriman]

This first hallmark means London according to a couple of Internet British silver mark reference sites I visited. I could use help with the second (maker) and third hallmark.

Hi there. The old 'uns are often the best 'uns <g>, and you've been seduced by an almost iconic Old Sheffield Plate -- sterling silver fused by heat on to copper, rolled into sheets and worked like silver, 1743 - c.1855, aka "OSP" -- pseudo mark, by design luring the unwary into thinking it's sterling assayed by the London Assay Office and marked with its equally iconic leopard's head mark instead. Following the beginnings of regulation of the plate industry in 1784, makers began to register their own maker's marks at assay, and you have the potential good fortune to have an equally iconic OSP maker's mark on your piece, the final crossed keys mark. First registered, with a square cartouche, in 1784 by J. Parsons & Co in a form that has the handles topmost in the mark, it was registered in 1799 by a former partner in Parsons, John Green, under the name John Green & Co., now with the handles inverted, again in a square cartouche. Finally, it was adopted one more time, in the same orientation, by Henry Wilkinson, now in a heraldic shield cartouche, in 1836. Wilkinson preserved the mark in use well beyond the OSP days, as a trademark alongside the "HW&Co" maker's mark for their electroplated silverware, but not used with their sterling silver marks, until the company's demise in 1894. It is Wilkinson's mark we are potentially dealing with here.

There's a catch: the mark is slightly faulty, which can indicate counterfeit OSP, the numbers of which are legion, with early (and not so early) makers of the much cheaper electroplated silverware, mid to late 1840s, trying to masquerade their wares as OSP in order to rip their customers off, plain and simple. Fortunately, I have genuine Wilkinson OSP here of 1836-38 vintage to benchmark your marks against. (photos below) As you can see, at first glance all the marks agree: the faux crowned leopard's head pseudo mark, the probable craftsman who actually made it, his initials in gothic script ("DG") in a single punch, and finally the crossed keys. As mentioned, Wilkinson's cartouche was an heraldic shield with a downward point at the bottom. Here the marks diverge, for yours looks plain rectangular instead. That would suggest the Green mark of 1799 except for the fact that, like Parsons before him, his crossed keys were always used in conjunction with a slim, rectangular cartouche immediately to the left of them with "I. Greene & Co" inside in normal uppercase print. Unlike his later marks, Wilkinson's OSP maker's mark was the shielded crossed keys *only*. There were no initials or other defining scripted marks of his, used in conjunction.

The shape of the cartouche is not the only detail in these 3 marks that could cast doubt on provenance for your piece to be a genuine Wilkinson one. When you regard the 'leopard's head' punch, the crown and the shape of the ears below it are 'not quite right' either. From what is left of the craftsman's punch, the initials could be credible but a clearer picture could probably help define that better.

There are other characteristics of OSP that can help identification and further photographs homing in on those (e.g. the armorial inside the dish, the rope silver wire finish to the edge, the condition of the gilding), as well as on the crossed keys mark itself, could probably help bolster or undermine whether your little piece is the genuine article or not. If you would like to pursue this further, I'll happily provide you with suggestions on what to take pictures of and how, as well as one or two simple, practical tests to apply to the piece. Just let me know.

Hope this helps some of the way at least.

All the best,

[2209patrick]

Hello.

I don't recall ever having seen the leopard's head mark in Old Sheffield Plate ( or fused plate) marks.
Have seen it in very old British pewter marks.
Have always thought that in Great Britain the leopard's head was just for sterling silver assayed in London.

Pat.

[Ahriman]

Have always thought that in Great Britain the leopard's head was just for sterling silver assayed in London.

And you'd be absolutely right, Pat. (It wasn't always just London, though. In 1477, the mark is referred to in a statute as indicating 'the touch for London and other places', for example.) It's for that reason I tried to put the 'leopard's head' mark in quotes whenever referring to the OSP pseudo-mark version. It's a look-a-likey only. Neither its features nor its supposed regal headgear actually coincide in detail with the real London Assay mark ever, but it's more than close enough to evoke that impression to the casual viewer, and that is precisely what it was meant to do at the time. It merely evoked the proper leopard mark in the viewer's mind, in effect 'legitimising' OSP, particularly when still 'the new kid on the block' in silver terms. (It's worth remembering that OSP explicitly sought to rival, if not supplant sterling, something that sterling silversmiths were none too happy with at the time, hence in the end the progressive regulation of the plating trade from 1784 onwards as I mentioned.) Ultimately, such 'evoking' of assay marks was explicitly outlawed by statute. prohibiting the making/using such (pseudo)marks, after which the dubious practice went the way of all flesh in the end. Until that was the case, however, they tried it on with relish, and you can come across some very dodgy OSP 'leopards' with considerable regularity, made worse when the fakers of OSP took it upon themselves in their turn to 'fake the fake' as 't were... :-)))

[2209patrick]

Hello.

We see this set of marks very often here in the United States.
The pieces I've seen have all been electroplated.



Pat.

[admin]

It's for that reason I tried to put the 'leopard's head' mark in quotes whenever referring to the OSP pseudo-mark version.

What OSP version of the "leopard's head" are you referring to?

[Ahriman]

Hello.

We see this set of marks very often here in the United States.
The pieces I've seen have all been electroplated.Pat.

I'm so sorry to have dropped off the radar, Pat, but shivering when I wrote my previous post, I didn't realise it spelled 'flu. Scrabbling back up now -- and the provenance of these dratted marks has become a bit of a bane -- both you and Admin have provoked a reason to revisit decisions made a few months back where they overlap the marks on the piece I have illustrated from my own collection. Two other people were involved in establishing provenance on that specific piece -- and I've rattled their cages appropriately <g> -- because we'd all like to crack this one at long last. 'Flu is a pest, but bedtime gives think-time. :-)

You said you see these marks often but, singularly and definitively, you don't spontaneously attribute them to any one maker specifically? If that was an omission out of ennui of having seen them so often but you have an attribution for your marks, please help me out. There's a story in the questioner's piece, mine, and whichever you have seen, and I -- and and two friends who, unlike me, are OSP scholars with 60 years OSP experience between them -- have been teasing away at this for almost a year in pursuit of provenance for my piece which they would dearly like to relieve me of -- in vain. ;-)

In my next post I'll try to give the story "Ol' Thumper" which I illustrated and maybe more heads and minds can crack even more. But any provenance for your marks you have would be tremendously helpful.

Warmly, and with a head now only half-full of cotton wool... :-))

[2209patrick]

Yes, these pseudo marks are confusing.
Sorry to say, I have not been able to identify the manufacturer who used them.
All I can tell you for certain is that the two set of marks that I posted pictures of earlier came from electroplated pieces found in the U.S.

Hope you start feeling better.
I'm just getting over my case of Flu that lasted for almost three weeks.
Either I'm getting old or these Flu bugs are getting stronger.

Pat.

[Ahriman]

We see this set of marks very often here in the United States.The pieces I've seen have all been electroplated..

Sleepless "in Seatlle", Pat :-))) Those two marks you've illustrated come from two distinct sets of punches. Two manufacturers? I'll post back on the "bigger stuff" tomorrow. Thanks for a laugh out loud, recognising myself in where ''flu ain't what it used to be'... :-))