www.925-1000.com

Is this common practice? I recently found a piece that I believe to be German and it's marked only with "800"
It's a somewhat important piece in the Trompe L'oeil style. Why would they not mark this with a maker's mark or hallmarks?
I'll post pictures in a few minutes. Below the 800 mark you can see what appears to be an assay scrape.

On Saturday I will have this piece tested (by X-ray) to confirm that it's 800 fine...

I am finding this looks like it might have been made by Julius Herz. Does anyone have any examples of Herz's work?

What makes you think that is German?
In Italy, for example, until 1935 it was very common to mark only 800.

My gut is that it's German. Plus it looks similar to works by Julius Herz.

A friend pointed me towards another possibility of it being Lazarus Posen. I'm honestly leaning more towards Posen now given the extreme similarity in design in examples that I am seeing. Is there any reason why he would only mark this 800? I cannot understand making such a wonderful piece and not putting my name on it...

It's hard to fathom that this could possibly be German without the Imperial marks (crown, moon) even if there are no maker marks. Italian, on the other hand, looks feasible both stylistically and with its mark.

I know exactly how you feel.

How could someone make such a beautiful piece and only stamp "800" on it? I have found a few pieces with only an "800" or a "900" with an initial or two, and the best we could come up with is to describe it as "Continental." Somewhere in the continent of Europe, at some point from 1880-1920, would be my guess.

Remember that in Belgium, hallmarking was not compulsory during this period, so whenever I find a mystery piece such as this, I always keep Belgium as a distinct possibility. It's always great to find a real piece of Belgium silver, for example by Wolfers or Delheid Freres, but let's get back on track...

If this were German, I believe, and correct me if I am wrong, that the one city of Hanau in Germany was exempt from the traditional German hallmarking system, so you sometimes find pieces of "Hanau Silver" which has a wide range of different kinds of marks, many of which seem decorative in nature and some of which make no sense whatsoever. Hanau Silver was very often 800 purity.

So why couldn't this be a piece of Hanau silver?

Hello, I see nothing that connects this to Hanau, the piece was quite crudely done. Btw Hanau makers were not exempt from German hallmarking laws. I feel a non European origin of this piece is also possible. Regards, Bahner

Agree with Bahner; does not look like Hanau silver and ``Trompe L'oeil style`` is rather illogical.
The silver rope is indiscriminately applied.