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My attempt to explain silver hallmarks

   I vividly remember, a few years ago, doing a total house clearance. A nice house in NW London. The deceased dad had been a pipe smoker so most stuff was ruined; pictures, books (of which there were thousands), any soft furnishing, and the hard furnishings, all stank. We could not get the smell out of even polished wood. About the only thing that didn't still smell after cleaning was the silver. And there was quite a bit of it. We paid a fair price for the contents, and checked with the owner that the silver was included. It was she said, but there were some family pieces in the loft that were excluded but could we look at it with a view to making an offer. Next time we went it was laid out for us to examine: it was all silver plate. Nice stuff, but plate. Yet the real silver was included in the price.
   This memory has come back to me many times over the years because I am consistently amazed by the number of people who can't 'read' silver marks. The basics are pretty simple and armed with them, buying silver with confidence becomes easy. So when someone came in yesterday with a 'silver' spoon rescued from the local stream I asked her directly "do you know how to tell real silver from silver plate?" No, she replied. Because what she showed me was a very sad little thin teaspoon clearly marked EP, for electro-plate, and with faux hallmarks. But to understand these it helps to understand the basic hallmarking system for silver.
   Sure, there are exceptions to everything, and some silver is not marked in accordance with the following, but generally, if you like English sterling silver enough to think about buying some, the next few paragraphs will help you identify what you are looking at.

THE BASICS
   Silver is too soft on its own to be much use - it would not keep shape, so the silver you see is an alloy, usually with copper. This allows it to keep its essential 'silveriness' while giving it a bit of strength. The alloy proportions vary. In the UK, Sterling Silver is 92.5% silver and 7.5% other. Nowadays you will see a lot of jewellery and so on marked "925". This is the same as Sterling Silver. Silver marked, for example, 800 is only 80% silver and therefore of lower quality. You will find a lot of German silver is 800 quality.

KEEPING UP STANDARDS
   Very sensibly Britain took an early decision, possibly as early as during Saxon times, to monitor and regulate the quality of silver made in the (now) UK. Certainly since the 12th century there has been a standard. In the mid-14thC it was decided that silversmiths should mark their pieces with their own registered mark. In the late 17thC this pictorial system was replaced with initials. From around the late 15thC a date letter was introduced. The idea was to make tracing the maker and the assay-officer easier in cases of sub-standard pieces. This has made collecting silver a joy for collectors, and achieved the aim of maintaining standards.
   In 1544 the LION PASSANT GARDANT (or Guardant to give its full heraldic spelling) (in caps because its important) made its first appearance, probably in London. In the 1720's it extended to all the assay offices. There are two types of Lion: the Gardant, which means looking over his shoulder, and Passant which is looking ahead. I would imagine that as a new collector of Silver, you will mostly be looking for a LION in the Gardant position called by most dealers Lion Passant. But, if you are at the stage of recognising the differences and knowing which Assay office used which, you are not going to learn much here! The rest of us can largely ignore the distinction

THE FOUR MARKS THAT MAKE A HALL(mark)
   So what emerged from all this is a recognisable set of hallmarks that can be 'read' and puts the amateur collector on the same footing as the professionals. I realise that writing something like this puts me on a hiding to nothing. Someone is going to say "ah, but what about...". Yes, indeed, there are exceptions, but I maintain, for the new collector of English silver from let's say 1800 to today, these are going to be helpful notes. And if you become an expert and start to read more deeply into the subject you too will realise how much more there is to all this. But for now, let's start your collecting bug in the main stream of standard English Sterling Silver.
   The thing you are looking for is a set of hallmarks. They can be well hidden, especially on heavily decorated pieces, but you will develop an eye. You need two things now, a loupe or magnifier and a book on hallmarks. Once you've found the marks, the first thing to look for is the Lion (see the pic below). Whether he is Passant or Gardant, he must be there for you to be confident that this English Silver. If he's not there, then put the item back down and move on, no matter how enticing you find it, nor how effective the sales pitch is. Step away from the lion-less silver thingy. If he is there, then bravo, we are onto a bit of Sterling Silver. There are four compulsory marks you are looking for. the Lion is one, the others will be a Makers Mark of their initials which you can use to track down their name and so on, a date mark which is a letter (now an optional mark - since 1998) in a box of some shape and a city mark.There may be other marks, including a reigning (1784-1890) monarchs head, duty marks and so on, but lets focus on the main four which tell us what we need to know.

SILVER TO THE LETTER
   At the end of the day we only have 26 letters in the alphabet, and as far as I am aware that is not about to change. And since hallmarks have been in use for 600-ish years, you can see the problem immediately. So this has been got round by using letters in Series. The series can be defined by the case of the letter (upper/lower) the font, the shape of the box and so on. The letters changed each year, but not (until 1975) on 1st January, and not all the different Assay offices changed in the same month. So, the date letter is a minefield, but luckily it is well documented and a good guide will sort you out. Pay attention though; look carefully at the box it is in as well as the letter. The other complication is that each Assay office has its own series, so in York an upper-case T can be 1855 but in Sheffield it can be 1886 (or 1961) so the other thing you need to know is the Assay office, or City mark. If you've got your hallmarks guide with you, you can look these up too, but there aren't so many and they are relatively straightforward and actually quite logical.

Edinburgh - famous for its CASTLE
Sheffield - the Yorkshire ROSE
Dublin - famous for Guinness and the HARP is therefore incorporated in their mark*
London - a LEOPARD, which is alliterative at least
Birmingham - an ANCHOR - no, I've no idea either
Glasgow - a TREE a FISH and a BELL. Nope, no idea you'll just have to remember that one too.
Chester - three SHEAVES of corn. Cheshire is good farming country? 

Glasgow is closed, as are Exeter - desirable by collectors, and Newcastle. The problem here is that these two also used Castles. York is closed too, as is Norwich.

My advice on this is to get stuck into Google and/or your hallmarks book and learn to recognise the differences. Assay Office Hallmarks is a good search term to use. If I start on them we'll be here to Christmas and I'm not saying which year.

So, to sum up, find that Lion Passant mark. They do vary - look at this lot:LionPassant_01.jpg

and bear in mind that the marks are hand-stamped and sometimes can be a bit, er, rubbish. Reading them 100% accurately takes time, and practice. Only one way to get the practice in.... If you see what looks like a set of marks, but the Lion's not among them then you are likely to be looking at Faux Marks. And that generally means Plate. Silver Plate was employed so that beautiful objects normally only affordable by the very wealthy could be copied for shape and design and  sold in greater numbers. In the same way they used to mark the piece with copies of hallmarks. The punishments for falsifying hallmarks are severe so actually faux marks are not really very alike, but they can fool the inexperienced eye. 
   Stick with the Lion and assume if he is lacking that it is not Sterling Silver and you will be protected from making the mistake that I see repeated from N London to the sunny South West.

*this association is not necessarily true, as Harp is in fact a lager

And for those of you who haven't worked it out from this guide that makes something essentially simple seem incredibly complicated (sorry), the image at the top is silver, Birmingham, 1906 and the maker is/was CH. Which may or may not be Charles Horner, Have you read this

PS You know the drill - comments best on FB: handy shortcut button below this....

Syiive commented, by going here -> HardyAntiques:
Great blog again. Some exceptions to every rule - silver thimbles (English ones) weren't marked at all prior to about 1890. Many small items (I'm talking about sewing tools specifically as that's my thing) only had makers marks, like IT for Joseph Taylor, and often if very lightweight have no marks at all. All adds to the fun!

Since I wrote this, the ability to comment directly has been added: via the box below - please add, and ask too, I am genuinely interested.

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