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Hi,

Hope this part of the forum is the most appropriate one for such a question.

I am not an engineer or a scientific, but I wonder if, as of today, there is some non-destructive technics (spectography maybe) to determine the origin of silver used by a silversmith in order to make its work ?
For example, can some scientific analysis state that the silver used for making a fork comes from a silver mine of Bohemia, or come from Potosi mine, etc. ?
Since we know the period of activity of many significant silver mines, that could help for datation of silver objects, and also in order to detect forgeries (like dendrochronology is sometimes used for objects made of wood : old furnitures etc.) ?

X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) analysis is widely used in research of e.g. antique coins.
Enter ``antique silver xrf analysis`` to access many scientific papers; unfortunately most of them are not free.
Generally speaking, antique silver is more complex in composition and has more impurities due to rather primitive metallurgical processes, as opposed to modern silver alloys. For exaqmple, antique silver has traces of gold but also some lead. Of course, majority of scientific research is done with really antique silver i.e. 2000 years old artifacts.
Regards

Thanks for your comments AG2012.

Indeed, it seems that some scientific tests are realized on archeological objects, and sometimes on objects from the Middle-Age, but not on more recent objects.

I do not know if such cientific tests are not realized on objects from Renaissance, 17e, 18th centuries... because of the cost of such tests (I do not know if such tests are really expensive as of today), or if such tests are not accurate enough so far to provide useful information, or... if art expert are just not used to/do not have the habits to do so on such "Modern" objects. Some habits are difficult to change...

I read that old silver (before 1800 very grossly) contain much more gold that refined silver offered today on the market. A famous silver specialist suggested in a book that it may be one the reasons why old silver looks different from "recent" silver. Of course, that was the opinion of an antiquarian, not a scientific fact, so I do not know if the difference in % of gold is sufficient to change silver color or brightness for an human eye.