Why a British mark is rare
Scarcity in a hallmark comes from one of two things: a law that required the mark for a short time, or an assay office that shut its doors. Neither has anything to do with how well made the piece is, which is why a rare mark turns up as easily on a teaspoon as on a tureen. The windows below are narrow enough that the mark dates the object more tightly than the date letter beside it.
| Mark | Struck | The window |
|---|---|---|
| Britannia and the lion’s head erased | 1697 to 1720 | 23 years compulsory, optional since |
| Duty drawback mark, a Britannia struck incuse | 1 December 1784 to 24 July 1785 | Under eight months |
| Sovereign’s head struck incuse | 1 December 1784 to 1786 | About eighteen months |
| York, Exeter and Newcastle town marks | To 1858, 1883 and 1884 | The offices closed |
| Chester and Glasgow town marks | To 1962 and 1964 | The offices closed |
Britannia and the lion’s head erased, 1697 to 1720
An Act of 1697 raised the standard for English wrought silver from sterling to 958 parts in a thousand, to stop silversmiths clipping and melting the coinage for raw metal. London marked the new standard with a seated figure of Britannia in place of the lion passant, and a lion’s head erased in place of the leopard’s head. A London piece from those years therefore carries no leopard and no lion passant at all, which is the fastest way to recognise the period across a saleroom.
A statute of 1719 restored sterling from 1 June 1720, and Britannia stayed on the books as a higher standard a maker chose to work in. Silversmiths still take it today, so the figure of Britannia on its own does not date a piece.
The date letter is what separates the compulsory period from the later elective one, and the London entry carries the office side of the change. The identifier names the Britannia standard at its first step, and its earliest London date letter table starts in 1876, so it will not give you the year on a piece from the Britannia years. Bradbury’s tables will.
The drawback mark, eight months of it
Duty on silver by weight began on 1 December 1784. Plate made for export was exempt, and the duty already paid at the assay office was drawn back, so the office struck a further mark to record the repayment: the standing figure of Britannia with her spear and shield, cut into the metal rather than raised in relief.
The punch damaged finished work, and it was abandoned on 24 July 1785 while the drawback itself carried on. Under eight months of production carries the mark, and it was struck on plate leaving the country. A drawback mark on a piece in a British house is worth a specialist’s opinion before anything else happens to it, and worth photographing before it is cleaned, because the mark is cut into the surface and a polishing wheel takes it off.
The duty head that dates a piece to eighteen months
The sovereign’s head shows that duty was paid, and it was struck from 1 December 1784 until duty was abolished in 1890. The first version of it is the one to look for.
| Duty head | Struck | How it looks |
|---|---|---|
| George III, incuse | 1 December 1784 to 1786 | The bust cut into the metal, below the surface |
| George III, cameo | 1786 to 1820 | Raised in relief like the rest of the row, and facing the other way |
Two changes landed together in 1786: the head went from incuse to relief, and it turned from facing left to facing right. The offices did not all switch on the same day, and Chester’s records show it went to relief some months ahead of London, so the eighteen months is approximate at the edges. The hallmarks guide has the full table of duty heads reign by reign.
The offices that closed
The 1697 Act left the provincial offices with no authority to mark the new standard, and assay outside London stopped. The Act that put it right was titled for the cities it named: York, Exeter, Bristol, Chester and Norwich. Bristol never opened a working office. Norwich did not recover, and its marks are the scarcest of any British assay town. Newcastle was restored by a further Act in 1702. This is why Chester and Exeter marks resume in 1701 with a gap behind them.
| Office | Marking silver until | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Norwich | Shortly after 1700 | Named in the Act, never resumed marking |
| York | 1858 | Closed when the local trade died out |
| Exeter | 1883 | Marks resume in 1701 after the gap |
| Newcastle | 1884 | Restored by a separate Act in 1702 |
| Chester | 1962 | Much of what it marked was made in Birmingham |
| Glasgow | 1964 | The most recent British closure |
Chester and Glasgow marked industrial quantities into the 1960s, so their town marks are ordinary, and the Chester entry explains why so much of the work the office stamped came from Birmingham. Norwich, York and Newcastle are the three a specialist stops at, and none of them can be dated with the tools here: the identifier carries no date letter table for a closed office, and says so when you choose one. That year comes from Jackson’s or from Bradbury’s tables.
A row that carries no British town mark at all is a different system rather than a rare one. French silver is marked with a Minerva head and no town mark, German silver with a crescent and a crown and no assay at all, and a Continental piece at 800 is ordinary in its own country however unfamiliar the punches look here.
The first fifty years at Sheffield
Sheffield began marking in 1773 and did not run its date letters in order until 1824. The letters in between were picked at the guardians’ annual meeting, starting with an E for the Earl of Effingham, so counting forward from the start of a cycle lands in the wrong reign. Anything from those fifty years needs a printed table such as Bradbury’s, and the Sheffield entry sets out why the letters run out of order and where the identifier’s Sheffield cycles begin. Establish the year before the piece goes on the scales, because an early Sheffield letter puts it in the office’s first two cycles and out of the scrap queue.
What to do with a piece that carries one
A rare mark changes what the piece is, and it changes nothing about what it weighs. That matters because the two buyers for old silver price it in opposite ways: a refiner pays for grams, and a saleroom specialist prices the row of punches first and the grams second. An early mark sent to a refiner is melted at the same rate as a 1970s tray.
So read the marks before the scales come out. Photograph the row square on, establish the office and the period, then decide the route with the scrap or auction guide, which works out which side of that line a given piece falls on. If the punch holds initials rather than a standard or a town, the makers’ marks guide covers the registers that turn them into a name.
