The four marks
Turn the piece over. On the underside of a teapot, the back of a spoon stem, or the rim of a salver, there will be a short row of tiny stamped symbols. Each one was struck at an assay office after the metal had been tested, and together they form a legal record that has been kept in Britain since 1300.
The order varies by office and period, and pieces marked between 1784 and 1890 also carry the sovereign’s head to show that duty was paid. Read them in this sequence and the rest follows.
| Mark | What it tells you | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Standard mark | The metal and its fineness | Lion passant for sterling |
| Town mark | The assay office that tested it | Anchor for Birmingham |
| Date letter | The year, from the office’s cycle | Lower-case k in a shield |
| Maker’s mark | The sponsor who submitted the piece | PS for Paul Storr |
The standard mark
The lion passant, walking left with its right forepaw raised, has meant sterling since 1544: 925 parts silver in a thousand. In London the lion’s head was turned to face the viewer, the heraldic position called guardant, until 1821, when it turned forward. The figure of Britannia means the higher 958 standard, which was compulsory between 1697 and 1720 and has been used by choice since. A 925 in an oval is the fineness mark used on imported silver after 1904 and on all British silver since the 1999 changes to the Hallmarking Act.
Scottish silver carries a thistle instead of the lion until 1975, and Irish silver a crowned harp. If you find none of these and instead see EPNS, EP, A1, or the words “silver plate”, the piece is electroplate. It has a thin layer of silver over nickel or copper, and no assay office ever tested it. The six tests cover pieces with worn or missing marks.
The lion is the mark that matters. Without it, the rest of the row is decoration.
Where it was tested
The town mark tells you which assay office struck the piece. It is not always where the object was made, but it narrows the maker’s register you need to search.
| Mark | Office | Marking silver | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leopard’s head | London | 1300 to date | Crowned until 1821, uncrowned after |
| Anchor | Birmingham | 1773 to date | Struck sideways on small work |
| Crown, then a rose from 1975 | Sheffield | 1773 to date | The crown and the date letter shared a punch until 1824 |
| Three-towered castle | Edinburgh | 1485 to date | With a thistle from 1759, a lion rampant from 1975 |
| Tree, fish and bell | Glasgow | 1681 to 1964 | An office from 1819, closed 1964 |
| Three wheatsheaves and a sword | Chester | 1701 to 1962 | Much Birmingham smallwork was sent here |
| Hibernia | Dublin | 1637 to date | The crowned harp marked sterling to 2002 and is optional since, Hibernia the duty mark from 1730 |
| Three castles | Newcastle | 1702 to 1884 | Closed |
| Triple-towered castle | Exeter | 1701 to 1883 | Easily confused with Edinburgh |
| Five lions on a cross | York | to 1858 | Closed |
Each surviving office publishes its current marks, and the Goldsmiths’ Company Assay Office in London has struck them since 1300. The hallmarks index carries an entry for London, Birmingham, Sheffield, Chester, the two Scottish offices and Dublin.
The date letter
Each office ran through the alphabet one letter a year, changing the typeface and the shield shape at the start of every cycle. The same letter k appears in a dozen different years, so the shield and the style of the letter are what fix the date. Before 1975 each office had its own cycle; from 1975 all offices used the same letter in the same year, and since 1999 the date letter has been optional.
The table is the one part of this you cannot do from memory. The date letters guide explains how the cycles work, and the identifier carries the tables.
The maker’s mark
Initials in a punch, registered at the office by whoever took responsibility for the piece. The trade calls it the sponsor’s mark for that reason: the person who sent it for assay was not always the person who made it. On the Storr jug photographed above it reads PS. On a Birmingham teapot from 1889 it reads H&H for Hukin and Heath.
The shape of the punch matters as much as the letters. The same initials in a rectangle, an oval and a cartouche belong to three different registrations, and dating the piece first narrows the register to one. The makers’ marks guide sets out the registers that turn a set of initials into a name, and the makers’ pages cover the names that move a price.
The duty mark
A sovereign’s head in profile means the piece was marked between 1784 and 1890, when duty was payable on silver by weight. It is a useful cross-check on the date letter, and the monarch narrows the window on its own.
| Head | Years | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| George III, incuse | 1784 to 1786 | Facing left, struck into the metal |
| George III | 1786 to 1820 | Facing right |
| George IV | 1820 to 1830 | Facing left |
| William IV | 1830 to 1837 | Facing left |
| Victoria | 1837 to 1890 | Facing left |
Duty was abolished in 1890 and the mark stopped. A piece carrying a Victorian date letter and no duty mark was marked in 1891 or later, or is not what it claims to be.
Imported silver
Foreign plate sold in Britain has been marked since 1867, when an F in an oval was added to mean foreign. The Hallmarking Act of 1904 replaced that system: from 31 October 1904 imported wares carried a decimal fineness number in place of the standard mark, so 925 in an oval rather than the lion, together with a town mark reserved for imports.
Some of those import marks clashed with registered trademarks, and an Order in Council changed most of them in 1906.
| Office | Import mark |
|---|---|
| London | The sun, 1904 to 1906, then the sign of Leo |
| Birmingham | An equilateral triangle, unchanged |
| Sheffield | Crossed arrows, 1904 to 1906, then the sign of Libra |
| Chester | An acorn and oak leaves, unchanged |
| Edinburgh | Unchanged through 1906 |
This is why a Georg Jensen piece carries London marks and a decimal number rather than a lion. It was made in Copenhagen and assayed on import, and the marks record both facts. The dates on imported pieces are the date of import, not the date of manufacture.
Convention and commemorative marks
Britain joined the Vienna Convention on hallmarking in 1976, and a Convention mark, a set of balance scales containing the fineness number, is recognised here and in the other member states without further marking. A piece carrying it was legally hallmarked abroad.
Commemorative marks are optional additions struck in particular years, and they date a piece to twelve months on their own: the 1935 Silver Jubilee, the 1953 Coronation, the 1977 Silver Jubilee, the Millennium in 1999 and 2000, the 2002 Golden Jubilee, the 2012 Diamond Jubilee, the 2022 Platinum Jubilee and the 2023 Coronation.
The Hallmarking Act was amended in 1999. Millesimal fineness numbers became the compulsory part of the mark, the traditional symbols such as the lion became optional, and the date letter became optional too. A modern piece with three marks and no date letter is correctly hallmarked.
Three rows, read
| The row | What it reads |
|---|---|
| PS, leopard’s head crowned, lion passant guardant, lower-case l, George III head facing right | Paul Storr, London, 1807 to 1808, duty paid |
| H&H, anchor, lion passant, lower-case p | Hukin and Heath, Birmingham, 1889 to 1890, after duty was abolished |
| GJ in a dotted oval, Leo, 925 in an oval, lower-case k | Georg Jensen, imported and assayed in London, dated by the London cycle |
Work left to right, but read the town mark first. The office decides which date letter table applies, and everything else follows from the year.
What is not a hallmark
Pseudo-hallmarks are rows of symbols struck by platers to resemble the real thing: a shield, a head, a letter, all without a lion. They are legal and common on Victorian electroplate.
Continental marks follow their own systems and rarely include a date. The French Minerva head, the Dutch lion with a numeral, the German crescent and crown with 800: each certifies a standard, and none of them dates a piece the way a British date letter does.
A stamped 925 on its own, with no office mark and no maker’s mark, means a modern piece made outside the British hallmarking system. It says what the metal claims to be and nothing about who tested it.
What the marks do to the price
A plain Victorian teapot by an unknown Sheffield maker sells close to its weight in silver. The same form struck with PS and a London leopard sells for the name, and the gap is a factor of ten or more.
| Object | Marks | Hammer |
|---|---|---|
| Teapot, Sheffield 1889, unrecorded maker | Lion, crown, date letter | £180 |
| Teapot, London 1807, Paul Storr | Lion, leopard, date letter, PS, duty mark | £6,400 |
Both are illustrative figures from the price records. Before consigning anything, weigh it and check the scrap calculator, then check the maker.
