What the anchor certifies
An anchor in the row means the piece was tested at the Birmingham Assay Office. It is a town mark rather than a standard mark: it records where the silver was assayed, and the lion passant next to it records the metal, sterling at 925 parts in a thousand. Birmingham has struck the anchor since the office opened in 1773 and strikes it still.
Four punches make up a full Birmingham row: the lion passant, the anchor, a date letter for the year, and the maker’s mark of whoever sent the piece for assay. Anything marked between 1784 and 1890 carries a fifth, the sovereign’s head, which shows the duty on silver was paid.
Why Birmingham has an anchor
An Act of Parliament in 1773 gave Birmingham and Sheffield assay offices of their own, after a petition led by Matthew Boulton of the Soho Manufactory. Before that a Birmingham maker sent work to Chester or London and waited for it to come back, which is why so much early Birmingham smallwork carries a Chester row. The Birmingham Assay Office’s own account of the two town marks has the petitioners lodging at the Crown and Anchor tavern in the Strand, with Birmingham taking the anchor and Sheffield the crown.
The town’s trade shaped what the office marked. Buckles, buttons and snuff boxes came first, then the vinaigrettes, card cases and jewellery of the nineteenth-century Jewellery Quarter. Birmingham silver runs small and well made, and the anchor turns up on the objects that survive in a drawer rather than on a sideboard.
Birmingham date letters
The office has struck a date letter every year since 1773, working through the alphabet and then changing the typeface and the shield at the start of the next cycle. A letter alone dates nothing. The shape of the punch fixes the cycle, and the letter then fixes the year inside it.
| Years | Letters | What tells it apart |
|---|---|---|
| 1875 to 1899 | Lower-case a to z, no j | |
| 1900 to 1924 | Lower-case a to z, no j | Shield shape separates it from the 1875 cycle |
| 1925 to 1949 | Capitals A to Z, no J | |
| 1950 to 1974 | Capitals A to Z, no J | Shield shape separates it from the 1925 cycle |
| 1975 to 1999 | Capitals A to Z, no J | Every office used the same letter from 1975 |
| 2000 to date | Lower-case a to z, no j | Optional since 1999 |
Earlier cycles run back to 1773 on the same pattern. The identifier carries the tables, and the date letters guide explains how to read a shield.
The makers whose initials change the price
The maker’s mark is the punch that turns a weight of metal into a name. These are the Birmingham initials worth stopping at.
| Mark | Maker | Registered | Known for |
|---|---|---|---|
| NM | Nathaniel Mills | 1826 | Castle-top card cases, vinaigrettes, snuff boxes |
| H&H | Hukin and Heath | 1879 | The Christopher Dresser designs |
| E&CO | Elkington and Co | Art silver, and the electroplate patent of 1840 | |
| L&CO | Liberty and Co | 1894 | Cymric silver, designed for Liberty and made in Birmingham |
Nathaniel Mills and Liberty and Co have pages of their own, and the rest of the register sits on the makers’ pages.
What Birmingham silver makes at auction
| Object | Marks | Hammer |
|---|---|---|
| Nathaniel Mills castle-top card case, Birmingham 1845 | Lion, anchor, date letter, NM | £640 |
| Victorian bachelor’s teapot, Birmingham 1889 | Lion, anchor, date letter | £180 |
Both are illustrative figures from the price records. The card case sold for the maker and the scene on its cover. The teapot sold close to its weight in metal, which the scrap calculator works out from the grams.
Reading the rest of the row
The anchor gives you the office, the lion passant the metal, the date letter the year and the maker’s mark the name. A row with a leopard’s head instead belongs to London. The hallmarks guide takes all four marks in order on real pieces.
