Silverplate marks

Discover the origins of any piece of silver with this visual guide.

Reading silver hallmarks can tell you a lot about your silver item, including the purity, where it was assayed, in whose factory it was produced, and the year in which the item was assayed. This helpful guide will help you get started with reading your hallmarks. Do you have an item of silver that you want to know the value of? Use this form to get in touch and we will send your details to a silver expert who will get in touch and let you know what your silver is worth. The first step in reading silver hallmarks is to locate the marks on your item. The location of the marks varies from item to item, but there are some general rules.

Silverplate marks

Silver is never completely pure. Like gold, it is a soft metal and needs to be mixed with other metals to make it stronger. There is another grade of silver for British pieces: Britannia, which is parts per thousand silver and has a different symbol. There are also different grades and symbols for other countries but we will be focusing on identifying British sterling silver. To ensure that a piece has the correct amount of silver in it, it is sent to an assay office where the piece is tested and stamped with a hallmark. Hallmarking is probably the oldest form of consumer protection, dating back to the s! Great Britain is lucky to have one of the best hallmarking systems in the world, so it is possible to date and identify the maker of a piece of silver and the town where it was assayed. Silver hallmarks help identify who made your piece, what grade of silver it is made from, the age and where it was hallmarked. What to look for on your piece: first you need to find your marks. Sometimes they will be quite obvious, on the back of cutlery or on the base of an item, but sometimes they are hidden within a pattern so you may need a magnifying glass to hunt for them. On this button hook the hallmark is well hidden, just behind the ear. The most important symbol to look for is the lion passant 4 , which identifies the purity of your piece is sterling silver. Now look for the town hallmark: in this photo we see the anchor denoting it was assayed in Birmingham 3. The date letter changes every year so you can precisely date the year it was made. The last mark 5 the Sovereign Head, in this case, is Queen Victoria, showing the duty has been paid.

No official records explaining its introduction survive.

Sheffield Plate is a cheaper substitute for sterling, produced by fusing sheets of silver to the top and bottom of a sheet of copper or base metal. This 'silver sandwich' was then worked into finished pieces. At first it was only put on one side and later was on top and bottom. Modern electroplating was invented by Italian chemist Luigi V. Brugnatelli in Brugnatelli used his colleague Alessandro Volta's invention of five years earlier, the voltaic pile, to facilitate the first electrodeposition.

The key is in the markings. Silver plate markings may seem like a mysterious language, but fear not, my friend. You pick it up and examine it, but then notice some mysterious markings on it that leave you scratching your head. Fear not, my fellow treasure hunter! They contain crucial information about the piece, such as its purity, date of manufacture, and where it was made. Sounds like a lot, right?

Silverplate marks

Reading silver hallmarks can tell you a lot about your silver item, including the purity, where it was assayed, in whose factory it was produced, and the year in which the item was assayed. This helpful guide will help you get started with reading your hallmarks. The first step in reading silver hallmarks is to locate the marks on your item. The location of the marks varies from item to item, but there are some general rules. For example, the hallmarks on silver flatware are usually located on the back of the piece, on a flat edge. If the hallmark is unclear then you can breathe on it — like you would to produce condensation on a window, and the mark should become a little clearer. The standard mark identifies your item as being silver. The mark that indicates sterling silver is called the lion passant. Two variations of this mark have been used throughout history.

Givemethevin llc

Alternatively, online guides are available to help you. When Did Silver Hallmarks Start? Silver Dictionary' of A Small Collection of Antique Silver and Objects of vertu , a pages richly illustrated website offering all you need to know about antique silver, sterling silver, silverplate, Sheffield plate, electroplate silver, silverware, flatware, tea services and tea complements, marks and hallmarks, articles, books, auction catalogs, famous silversmiths Tiffany, Gorham, Jensen, Elkington , history, oddities You may find that your item does not bear the lion passant, but rather the figure of Britannia, indicating that the item is of On a spoon handle marked with the maker Crosby, Honnewell, and Morse is the number ""—which is a code for sterling. LA LZ. MA OZ. Silver Dictionary' of A Small Collection of Antique Silver and Objects of vertu , a pages richly illustrated website offering all you need to know about antique silver, sterling silver, silverplate, Sheffield plate, electroplate silver, silverware, flatware, tea services and tea complements, marks and hallmarks, articles, books, auction catalogs, famous silversmiths Tiffany, Gorham, Jensen, Elkington , history, oddities FA FZ. In many cases, the older the item, the higher the value. Philip Ashberry began trading in making Britannia metal wares. The combination of marks on your silver items mean different things.

You can't pore over auction records and price guides to find values for your silver and silver plated antiques if you don't know exactly what you have, including when and where it was produced along with who made it.

The most important symbol to look for is the lion passant 4 , which identifies the purity of your piece is sterling silver. Peter C. Use profiles to select personalised advertising. Free Silver Valuations. You'll also find a letter stamp telling you when the silver piece was made. The hallmarks here comprises L;R the makers mark, the lion passant, the London town mark, the London date letter, and the Jubilee mark. The piece can reasonably be dated c. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. This is when the idea of assaying for purity was introduced. Nephew's son Roger ran the business from the war until the 's. Use profiles to select personalised content. Understand audiences through statistics or combinations of data from different sources. To help make silver identification easier, we're sharing a visual guide to some of the most common silver marks you can find in the marketplace today. Fi Fz.