Where is this spoon from?

[juantotree]

Hi

This silver dessert spoon has me stumped. Does anybody recognise any of these marks?

Many Thanks

Martin

[silvermakersmarks]

The Hebrew character in the third image appears to match a Walker & Hall electroplate date letter although I don't know what year it is. Possibly the spoon was made by Walker & Hall for a retailer called Lewis?

Phil

[dognose]

It does indeed look like a match for the Walker & Hall date letter for 1911.

Trev.

[juantotree]

Thanks for the information guys. Interestingly the spoon definitely tests as sterling which begs the question if British, why no standard marks?

Cheers

Martin

[legrandmogol]

Unless you file into the piece, and often deeply, acid testing silverplate is useless

[Aguest]

I have a piece of Pelican Ware T.W. (Thomas Wilkinson) which is a berry spoon with the fruits in the bowl and it tests positive for sterling as well, and i found another report of it testing positive for sterling silver, so my current theory is that some English Silver Plate circa 1870 used a higher-than-normal amount of pure silver in the electroplating process, and you cannot see the base metal underneath, even in the places where the spoon has been resting on a table for the past 150 years, and this spoon seems to fall into this category___

I have never seen a piece of American Silver Plate which tested positive for sterling silver; even just a simple surface rub does not contain enough silver atoms to make give a positive result using the acid test. Why this English Silver plate circa 1870 tested positive, I really do not know, but this Pelican Ware did for myself and one other person, at least___

Also, I have a report from an antiques dealer whose acid solution got cold because it was in the car overnight, and he reported false positives that morning, again this is an anecdotal report, but make sure your acid solution is room temperature___

[juantotree]

Hi

I have done the acid test at room temperature and also on the end of the bowl where it has worn down through use. This would obviously expose the inner material of the spoon and it still tests as silver.

Martin

[Aguest]

I would have thought that spoon to be sterling silver as well___It passes the visual inspection, as well as the acid test___Strange, oh well, nice spoon!!!

[legrandmogol]

I am in the scrap silver/gold business and honestly, the English stuff usually is more heavily plated but for the most part, depending on what base metal the silver is plated over, the acid test is not reliable. You have to really know your marks but the more you handle silver and silverplate the easier it is to tell the difference just by looking at it. Even the best plate has tells. It looks different and tarnishes different and if its old it will almost always have a little bit of plate loss at certain spots. (we only melt the common / weighted / damaged stuff so everyone can relax lol)

[Traintime]

What region did the item surface in?

[juantotree]

Hi

I bought them a number of years ago from an auction in Cornwall.

Martin