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Francois Marie Raymond Labat Born: 3 Jul 1843, Cazeres, Haut-Garonne, son of Jean Vincent Labat & Philippe Antoinette Adoue (sister of Joseph Adoue) Married: 14 Sep 1867, Paris, 5th arrondissement, to Therese Eugenie Francois, daughter of Louis Charles Francois and Hortense Soibant. I have not ...

As a point of clarification, in the first standard Minerva the assay office code is under her chin; the "1" is always in front of her forehead. These positions are reversed in the second standard Minerva. It is also occasionally possible to differentiate Paris from the Provinces by the big...

Oops! Just realized I missed the topmost mark:

Top) An ewer: Rennes décharge mark for large silver, 1781-1789

Sorry about that!

The crowned “9” was the charge mark of the Rennes mint, but this piece was made in Saint-Malo, which was under the Rennes jursidiction during the ancien régime. Top to bottom: 1) A club + 84: Saint-Malo countermark for 1784, but in actuality probably used ca. May 1785 to ca. 1787. 2) "aa" ...

It's the mark of Jacques-Jeremie Hubert, buckler, working at 40 rue de Montmorency-Reunion, mark registered 1805-1806 with no cancellation date noted. (The "O" is not an initial, but part of the device: a coquille under a ring.) I was unable to find much information on him. Searching his n...

The maker is Eugène Delebois; see this thread: French Tureen - can you identify the maker's mark?

I am reasonably certain that the marks used 1808-1834 and 1834-1846 were not those of father and son, but one person: Pierre Francois Queille. The four generations of Queilles were: Pierre Francois Queille Born: 13 Jan 1781, Paris, 5th arrondissement, son of Pierre Queille & Gabrielle Soyez Marr...

Zurich is correct; the maker is Hans Conrad Lavater (1660-1735; master 1684). I would date this spoon around 1700. Nice find!

Ref: Eva-Maria Lösel, Zürcher Goldschmiedemunst (Zürich: Berichthaus, 1983), p. 241, maker/marks #337

Louis Gabriel Couvertié Born: 7 Oct 1778, St. Marc, San Domingue (now Haiti), son of Jean Couvertié (1738-1811) and Marie Ann Brandy Married, ca. 1799, probably San Domingue, to Marguerite Kunt (ca. 1777 - 1865) Died: 23 Jun 1844, New Orleans, Louisiana Couvertié came to New Orleans as one of the ma...

"1" = date code for 1857; "PACE" = maker Paolo Pace, registered 5 May 1855

Very strange – I think the listing at the patrimony site must have some error, given the incomplete and contradictory information. But I did some hunting and was able to identify the maker “Ferry” as Jean Lucien Ferry Born: 16 Mar 1855, Paris, 2nd arrondissement, son of Jean Emile Ferry, spur maker,...

Your interpretation is exactly right in nearly every respect. The butterfly is indeed a divisional punch for small silver items in use 1819-1838 and the crab mark is a post-1838 re-assay mark. And, yes, the two marks did use different bigornes, the 1819-1838 ones being less intricate and detailed th...

Correction: "Tardy gives only the 1819-1838 table."

As I've mentioned before, the numbers in French marks correspond to the official départemental numbers of each particular regime; the assay office numbers used in the first three post-revolutionary series of marks – First Republic (1798-1809), Empire (1809-1819), and Restauration (1819-1838) – are a...

This is not a Parisian maker (as evidenced by the provincial first standard rooster with the "1" on the left), so you will first need to identify the assay office. You need to clean the guarantee mark (the mark in the center of your third image, to the right of the rooster) and see if you ...

I don’t think Gustave Veyrat is correct; the French Architectural & Patrimony website describes his 1894-1911 mark as “GV with a wineglass”. The mark here, though worn, is almost certainly “VEYRAT” with two stars: the mark of Jean Francois Veyrat (ca 1786-1868) and his son and successor Augustin...

Funkel - Can you tell us the source of your images? It looks like an interesting reference!

Yes, the assayer's and maker's marks on Spanish silver can look very, very similar, particularly in the 19th century; without a definitive list of assayers or makers for a city it can be nigh impossible to tell which is which. Fortunately, there is a reasonably comprehensive list of Cordoba assayers...

Crístobal José de Leon was the secondary assayer in Córdoba from May 1855 until Sep 1881; the “C. LEON” mark is his, and the digits on top the date: (18)59 or (18)69. “A. Monserrat” is likely the maker, though who that might be I don’t know. This looks perfectly genuine to me.

Definitely Jean-Pierre Alquier. From 1701 until the Napoleonic occupation in 1798, Geneva had three different silver standards which were marked differently: First standard: 11 deniers (.915) - struck with the Warden's mark and the maker's mark. Second standard: 10 deniers (.833) - struck twice with...