You must be logged in to post a comment. Skip to content. Gold, silver, platinum, and, recently, palladium, are usually all hallmarked regardless of what region the metals come from What Is Hallmarking?
Origins of UK Hallmarking The concept of hallmarking itself dates back to nearly AD and was discovered on silver objects in Byzantine. A Fascinating History With the rise in vintage jewellery demand over the past several years increasing, there are numerous books that have been published and websites created which are dedicated solely to the history of the hallmarking process and hallmarks used over the years in the UK and around the world.
Unique, individual or custom marks—such as serial numbers, order numbers, artists marks, hallmarks, etc. Larger marks with several lines or large symbols, could be struck by hand or a machine press.
Most marks on silver plate, regardless of the size of the mark, were mostly struck by machine presses because the base metal was heavier and stronger than solid silver. Complex marks, like the Tiffany example previously discussed, may include both standard company marks found on all pieces, as well as unique marks for individual pieces such as an order number, pattern number, date letter and others. If this sounds like a lot of work, it was.
It also involved a great deal of highly specialized equipment. Fortunately, most forgers don't have the time or the money to duplicate original vintage marks so they take shortcuts. The most common shortcut is to cast, or mold, a mark rather than stamp marks.
If you make a single mold with an old appearing mark, every piece made in the mold will carry that mark. That process saves both the time it would take to stamp a mark on each new piece as well as the expense of the stamps and other necessary equipment. Some of the most common cast forgeries of old marks in the market today are found on figural napkin rings.
Cast, or molded, marks almost always lack the detail found in stamped marks. Cast marks tend to be shallow with ragged or blurred edges and uneven in depth of impression. Original stamped marks are just the opposite: clean sharp edges with an almost perfectly uniform depth of impression. Several examples of new molded marks are shown next to the original stamped marks in Figs. At the current time, faked cast marks are more commonly found on new silver plate than silver.
Pieces of silver with fake marks tend to be found on simply shaped objects easily cast as a single piece. These include thimbles, brooches, tussie-mussies, charms, needle cases and other similar pieces.
The biggest danger in detecting new molded marks is to stop your examination after you have matched a suspected mark to marks in a reference book. Molds made from originals produce copies with original appearing marks. You must examine how marks are made as well as how the mark reads.
This is especially important if your original mark is a line drawing and not a photograph. As a practical matter, it is almost impossible to remember all the names, forms and variations of silver marks. General line dealers and casual collectors can probably avoid most mass produced silver fakes in today's market by following the guidelines on page These short tips highlight the basic differences in how new and old marks are created and applied.
On this and following pages are examples of marks frequently seen on new silver. Most of these marks contain obvious features such as size, lack of detail, a convention mark, or the standard mark, that will help you easily identify pieces as new.
Keep in mind genuine marks on 19th and early 20th century silver and silver plate vary considerably in appearance and new marks frequently change. Many of these marks appear in areas where no logical normal wear would occur.
Blurred marks can be a sign of a cast, not stamped, mark. All marks, whether standing alone or combined with other symbols as the above example, are very nearly a guarantee of a reproduction.
The standard mark was very rarely used in vintage American silver. It was not widely used until the European Community EC adopted it in the mids. The standard mark above is smaller than the diameter of the lead in the wooden pencil shown for comparison. Any mark under one-sixteenth of an inch is suspect. Virtually without exception, authentic marks on vintage silver and silver plate were stamped, not cast. Reproductions, particularly new silver plate, are generally cast in molds.
Since new molds are usually made by copying originals, marks on originals are usually transferred to the new molds. Cast marks are almost always blurred with impressions of uneven depth. Stamped marks are generally much cleaner and sharper than cast marks.
The oval tab marked shown here is soldered on a new rattle. Some authentic Victorian-era silver-plated pieces do bear applied discs with the manufacturers name. However, even those discs should be examined very carefully.
Many genuinely old marked discs have been removed from inexpensive common pieces and applied to more expensive pieces. Prior to , each city had its own town mark and the guilds regulated the system.
Hallmarks on Period Jewelry. For estate jewelers and jewelry historians, hallmarks provide for an extra source of information to accurately date a jewelry object and determine by whom it was made. Although the study of hallmarks serves as a wonderful research avocation to many involved in the antiques trade, a trained professional can, and should, put such a desired object in the proper time frame without the presence of such marks.
Contemporary jewelry historians use hallmarks for research purposes but these hallmarks were never intended to make the life of appraisers easier. Rather, they were an early type of consumer protection. Since pre-Roman times gold and silver have been used as currency or as the counter deposit for money and one can imagine that a not so scrupulous person, with little fear of severe punishments, would find a means to tamper with the precious metal.
Scraping a small portion of a gold coin, or diluting a golden ornament with non-precious metals while selling it as pure gold, could in time build a small fortune and that type of counterfeiting was not uncommon in days gone by. In present time, labour costs exceed the profits to do so. It was for this reason that in the late middle ages, several European sovereigns issued regulations requiring that all gold and silver artifacts be marked with a unique stamp to identify the maker of the object; a responsibility mark to protect consumers.
Many collectors and civil servants responsible for tax collection, had no understanding of foreign antique marks. Their job was made even more difficult due to the fact that many objects were made in the neo-styles, such as neo-gothic, neo-renaissance and neo-baroque. These neo-style items looked very much like the artifacts made in their respective era.
From around people started noticing repetitive patterns and the study on hallmarks began, exposing many frauds in decades to follow. By a good hallmark inventory was at hand and the risks of an item being destroyed, due to falsified hallmarks, soon outweighed the profits of tax evasions.
By that time the general taste had changed from eclecticism to Art Nouveau and Edwardian. Thanks to the hallmark research that began in the late s, a good picture of hallmarking practices throughout the ages is now readily available. The interpretation of these hallmarks, however, requires specific training and a keen eye.
Especially in countries with no governmental assay offices, like the USA, the need for in-shop trained professionals in this field is required to interpret these stamps correctly. On a large percentage of antique jewelry these hallmarks are, due to various reasons, absent and estimations on the origin can only be done through careful observation and, if present, the correct interpretation of accompanying documentation. When hallmarks are present, they can add greatly to the value of the coveted object and that is especially true when the stamp is rare or that of an important maker.
Overview of Different Stamps. The interpretation of hallmarks and stamps are much dependent on the knowledge of the one who judges them and mistakes can be easily made by the neophyte. Purity Marks. Typical 19th Century Russian Hallmarks. The purity mark is one of the first stamps to look for when inspecting jewelry. When such a mark is found, it reveals the percentage of precious metal is used to create the item.
Jewelry Maker's Marks Database. In most cases this stamp is struck by the manufacturer and is therefore not a hallmark in the strictest sense, although the mark needs to be registered at the assay office. Date Letters. Date letters were first introduced in in London.
The head assayer was usually chosen from one of the most prominent guild members and the position changed hands every year. To prevent fraud by the assayer a new assay responsibility mark was introduced and this took the form of a letter from the alphabet. In practice that meant that every 25 years some letters were skipped the same letter should be used.
Town Marks. Due to the expansion of financial prosperity in the late middle ages and the renaissance hitherto, many nations with a mandatory hallmarking system opened new assay offices dispersed across the country in order to accommodate local precious metalsmiths. Though rarer these if probably used are also authentic notations of sterling silver.
This also represents silver. See the above chart. The precious metal trade is rife with fraud to this day, but a savvy customer can get along without getting ripped off in the meantime. If there are no silver stamps on the jewelry then this may indicate the jewelry is plated. It may be best to have such a piece tested.
Jewelers do such tests by applying acid to a very small piece of material taken from the jewelry. Silver is a precious metal and its authenticity should be verified. A Nitric Acid Test is typically used to check if silver is pure or plated. To do so, jewellers file a small part of the item in a discreet area where it cannot be seen. Jeweller then apply a few drops of nitric acid. If the area turns into creamy white, the silver is pure or sterling.
If green, it is probably fake or silver-plated. Stamps have existed since ancient times as a way to show the purity of precious metals. In many ways, these were actually among the first forms of consumer protection. In Europe, the tradition of hallmarking stems from the simple fact that frauds have always been rampant anywhere that money can be made.
The assaying process assured consumers that they were getting what they paid for and not a similarly colored metal. The British had a very intricate method of stamping their metals. The system used in England has changed over time and the assay office town stamp is no longer necessarily an indicator that the town in question was actually where the item was assayed. Before this, the vast majority of silver was obtained by melting coinage and there were no formal assay offices.
The US adopted the sterling standard in the s.
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