Early Irish letter opener ?

[dinio]

Hi,
This morning I found the following item for sale in a flee market here in south of France :



The seller told me that it is a silver plated letter opener from first half of 20C. It looked as solid silver to me but I had strong doubts because the marks did not fit any marking system used in 20C known to me. Nevertheless I bought it because it was cheap and I had a good feeling with it.

I spent some time this afternoon in order to study it, but I could not reach a consistent conclusion, and I wonder if someone could help me in this analysis.

The letter opener is 30 cm long and weighs 70 grams. It has a hole at one end and it has an engraved crest with a marquess crown with a snake coiled around a tree trunk. It bears three marks : the first one is rather clear and contains the letters MK, certainly the maker's mark. The second one is rubbed and it took a long time before I realized that it is the right portion of the crowned harp used for Irish silver. And the last one is so faint that I could not draw any hypothesis. I did not find any clue of other marks in any other place on the letter opener.



Here are closeup pictures of these 3 marks :



My hypothesis are the following :
- based on the crowned harp mark outline, the item could be dated from before 1794. After this date the right outline of this mark could not be as in the picture.
- I found only one maker in Dublin with MK mark : Michael Keating who was active in the 1780s. But there is no perfect match with the three versions of his mark that I have found.
- last mark could be a date letter or the Hibernia duty mark. But this faint mark does not look as the remains of an Hibernia mark to me. Am I right? If it is a date letter, which one? And in this case there would be two possibilities for the Hibernia mark : either the item is before 1730 when this duty was introduced, or the Hibernia was struck somewhere else and now is fully worn.
- finally, was letter openers usual in those times? Was it usual to receive so many letters that such an item would prove to be useful?

Hope to find some interest in the forum to help me to solve this puzzle.

Regards,
Dinio
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[dognose]

Hi dinio,

Good to hear from you again.

That's a great find, but it's not a letter opener, but a meat skewer, see:
http://www.925-1000.com/silverglossary5.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The maker is, as you suggest, Michael Keating, working c.1766-c.1802.

The worn mark does look like the remains of Hibernia, the top part being her left arm, you can just make out the ghost of the oval shield I think.

The Harp appeared in the oval shield as from 1787, so your skewer pre-dates that.

Keating had a reputation as forger and served a term of imprisonment for that offence, for more detail see:

http://www.925-1000.com/forum/viewtopic ... ht=keating" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Regards Trev.
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[dinio]

Hi Trev,

Thanks a lot for your help. Now that you have described it, I can recognize that the worn mark is for sure the Hibernia mark. Without a date mark the date will remain unknown, between 1766 and 1786.

I was a bit reluctant with the letter opener hypothesis and your identification as a meat skewer is much more consistent with the usage I was expecting for such an item.

I am very happy of this find because I had no such skewer in my collection, specially that old, even if the maker had been convinced of forgery in 1777. Indeed we can imagine that he changed his mind after this sentence, otherwise he would not have been allowed to continue working until 1802.

Thanks again for your valuable help.

Best regards,
Dinio
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