I can’t find this mark in any of my extensive (but by no means exhaustive) references. However, I have a theory.
I think the device in the city mark is a “Bärentatze”: a “bear’s gamb (arm)” in English heraldry. It was the symbol of the counts of Hoya, as well as the Lower Saxony district of the same name:
Hoya District. It was incorporated into the Municipal arms of the
city of Hoya as well.
Scheffler’s
Goldschmiede Niedersachsens notes that it was used as the Hoya city mark on silver, though he gives only some rudimentary drawings of it. An article in the December 2000 issue of the art journal
Weltkunst identifies a couple more Hoya marks not given in Scheffler, with much clearer illustrations:
Unfortunately, neither reference has this particular maker’s mark. However, Scheffler does list — but gives no mark for — a Hoya silversmith Hermann Heinrich Gottlieb Hundertmark (1769-1852). He was a second generation silversmith, the son of Johann Wilhelm Gottlieb Hundertmark (1740-1807), and was working for over fifty years, from at least 1796 to his death in 1852.
I think this is very possibly his unrecorded mark. Certainly the conjoined “HM” is a logical abbreviation of “Hundertmark”, and the 1830 style of these spoons fits quite neatly with his working years. (It is to be noted that his son, Wilhelm Christopher Heinrich Hundertmark, born 1804, was also a silversmith, but his “W.H.” mark is identified in the
Weltkunst article.)
Anyway, like I say, it’s a theory. I welcome any comments.
