What a maker’s mark is
A maker’s mark is a set of initials in a shaped punch, registered at an assay office by whoever sent the piece to be tested. It is the only mark in a British hallmark that names a person or a firm rather than a metal, a town or a year, and it is the mark that turns an anonymous weight of silver into something with a workshop behind it.
The trade calls it the sponsor’s mark, because the person who submitted a piece for assay was not always the person who made it. A retailer with a shop and no workshop registered a punch of his own and struck it on work bought in from a manufacturer. Most domestic silver was sent in by the hand that made it, and a late Victorian piece sold through a large retailing firm was the work of two separate businesses. The register names whichever of them took responsibility at the hall.
The format changed twice
An Act of Edward III in 1363 required every master goldsmith to have a mark of his own, so that faulty work led back to the man who made it. What went inside the punch changed twice after that, and the date of the piece decides which convention you are reading.
| Period | What the punch holds |
|---|---|
| To 1697 | A device, or initials with a symbol above or below: a bird, a fleur-de-lys, a sun |
| 1697 to 1739 | The first two letters of the surname |
| From 28 May 1739 | The initials of forename and surname |
| From 1999 | The same initials, still compulsory in a row where the lion and the date letter are not |
The Act of 1697 that raised English silver to the Britannia standard reset the format at the same time, and makers cut punches showing two letters of the surname. The Plate (Offences) Act of 1738 came into force on 28 May 1739, and required goldsmiths to give up those punches and enter new ones at the hall in their initials.
A punch reading Ba on a piece from the Britannia years is therefore the opening of one surname, Barnard or Bathurst or Bayley. The same two letters on a piece marked after 1739 stand for two names, a forename and a surname, and searching the older period by the newer rule is the commonest reason a hunt for a maker goes nowhere.
Finding the name, in the order the registers are arranged
The registers are filed by office, then by period, then by the shape of the punch. That is the order to work in, and it is why a set of initials on its own is a search through a century rather than a lookup.
- Read the town mark. It fixes which office’s register holds the entry, wherever the piece itself was made.
- Date the piece from the date letter. The date letters guide sets out how the cycles run and why the shield beats the letter.
- Search that office’s register for those years, matching the outline of the punch as well as the letters.
The outline does half the identification. The same two initials in a rectangle, an oval with a serrated edge and a cartouche with cut corners are three separate registrations by three businesses, and a register arranged by punch shape separates them on sight. Serif style, a dot between the letters, a pellet above them and the exact line of the shield are all part of the entry.
Photograph the row square on and lit from the side, so the outline reads as clearly as the letters. A mark rubbed by a century of polishing shows its shield when the light rakes across it.
The three registers that hold the marks
Bradbury’s pocket book carries the date letter tables. The maker’s mark needs one of three larger works, and which one depends on the year you established at step two.
| Reference | Covers | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| Jackson’s Silver and Gold Marks of England, Scotland and Ireland | All periods, all offices | Sir Charles Jackson’s work of 1905, in a third revised edition edited by Ian Pickford in 1989 with over 10,000 corrections |
| Grimwade, London Goldsmiths 1697 to 1837 | London, 1697 to 1837 | About 4,000 marks from the surviving registers at Goldsmiths’ Hall, with dates and a life for each smith |
| Culme, The Directory of Gold and Silversmiths, Jewellers and Allied Traders 1838 to 1914 | London, 1838 to 1914 | Over 16,000 marks and 4,000 biographies from the London Assay Office registers |
Culme’s title explains the sponsor’s mark better than any definition. The traders in it are jewellers, retailers and platers as well as silversmiths, because all of them registered punches and all of them appear in the office books.
Silver assayed outside London is the harder case. Grimwade and Culme both work from the London registers, the provincial books were kept by each office rather than centrally, and Jackson’s is the one of the three that reaches the provincial offices, Scotland and Ireland as well.
Where to ask when the books do not settle it
No free public register lists every British maker’s mark. The records sit with the individual assay offices and with the Goldsmiths’ Company, whose library in London identifies historic marks struck before 1975 and takes readers by appointment. For a London mark of the last fifty years, the Goldsmiths’ Company Assay Office answers from a clear photograph of the row and a description of the object.
The identifier on this site matches twelve sets of initials at its fourth step and says plainly when a set is not in its register yet. It reads letters rather than punch outlines, so it narrows a mark without closing it. The makers’ pages carry six names in full, each one a mark that changes an estimate before the object is looked at.
Three marks that get read as the maker’s
The date letter. One letter, alone, in its own shield. A maker’s mark holds two or more characters, and the two sit side by side in the row.
The duty mark. A sovereign’s head in profile, struck between 1784 and 1890. It is a portrait rather than a letter, and the hallmarks guide has the table of heads by reign.
A plater’s initials. Victorian electroplate carries rows of punches built to resemble a hallmark, initials and a letter included. The EPNS entry reads those rows by what is missing from them rather than by what is in them.
What a name does to the price
A mark that no register records leaves the piece at the value of its metal. Once a register names it, the piece comes off its weight, and the gap between two lots of six spoons shows how far.
| Lot | Maker in the catalogue | Hammer |
|---|---|---|
| Mixed set of six sterling teaspoons with an electroplated tray | None named | £40 |
| Set of six ‘Pyramid’ dessert spoons | Georg Jensen | £190 |
Both are illustrative figures from the price records. Six spoons and a tray with no name attached were catalogued and sold as metal. A dessert spoon is heavier than a teaspoon, so some of the gap is weight, and the rest of it is a name and a pattern that collectors ask for by both. The maker’s page sets out which Jensen marks carry the premium and which do not.
Work the town mark and the year before you go looking for the initials. A mark searched without a date is a mark searched in the wrong book, and the rare marks guide covers the periods where the register itself is thin.
