Dating gorham silver plate marks
20-Apr-2020 06:48
Most people would need to rely on the dealer or auction room from which the item was bought to identify the maker. with those simple steps, you can quite easily decipher the hallmarks on any piece of British silver made in the last 500 years.Silver jewelry marks are the hallmarks found on silver jewelry to help identify the composition and source of the jewelry.There are so many different hallmarks found on British silver that to know all of them would be impossible.
It is possible that your pattern is silverplate and not actual sterling silver.Look for a matching date letter with or without the duty mark as needed.Whilst looking for the date letter, you need to bear in mind that the font, it’s capitalisation and the shape of the background, known as the shield, are varied in each cycle of letters.If you can find one of these marks, then you know that the item is British silver and you can move onto stage 2.
Note that dublin is unique in using the same mark for the town mark and the standard mark. However, the crowned harp is often seen with another mark called the Hibernia which is similar to the Brittania Silver Mark of a seated lady.Armed with this book, the process of reading these marks can be split into the 5 simple steps shown below.