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HELLO

This thin gauge silver teaspoon has me really confused.


If we look at it as a Newcastle piece then it would be Thomas Watson & indeed the cartouche around the letter L seems to fit better with the L for Newcastle 1801 than London. But then why does it have the London lion & queen Victoria duty head?

Whereas if we say it’s London perhaps Thomas Whitehouse? 1886 then why does it have the Newcastle city mark?

THANKS IN ADVANCE

The Victoria duty mark indicates that the date of the hallmark cannot be before 1837 (in fact Newcastle did not start using this duty mark until about 1845). The letter L in a square punch was used by Newcastle for the years 1801, 1825 and 1850 so your hallmark is 1850. This implies therefore that TW is Thomas Wheatley, not Thomas Watson.

Newcastle hallmarks included the leopard's head (uncrowned after 1846, crowned before).

Phil

Thanks Phil for clearing that up.

What confused me is that in the date letters cycle for Newcastle 1839-1863 only the letters A-D, H, M & O have a square around them (at least the ones shown in my pocket ed. Of Jackson’s) & here the L has a square.

My pocket "Bradbury's Book of Hallmarks" shows square punches throughout the relevant cycle but I suspect that there must have been more than one date punch of differing sizes. However I have not seen a round punch used for any dates in this cycle.

Phil