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Castletop "D" could perhaps be the facade of Battle Abbey in East Sussex

Castletop "E" could only be the Royal Pavilion at Brighton !
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Castletop "B" looks ratherlike Bucklingham House/ Palace before the back sections were added. Might be worth checking the dates of the various alterations.
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To me the engraving looks either contemporary (or actually a little earlier !) My guess is that the piece was made by the understriker without the side engraving, which was added by a journeyman working for TO (which certainly looks like Grimwade 3450 (Thomas Ollivant ). He probably had an order fro...

I agree heartily with Graham. This mark occurs also frequently on buckles and I spent a long time at Goldsmiths' Hall looking at the copy registers for George Burrows and George Burnetts marks to tie them up with my specimens. And very frustrating it was too. I must confess I'd not considered George...

The sun has come out in England and I can use the camera at last . For interest, here are two other stock buckles with an IS mark. Note that even allowing for my poor close up skills you can see apparent individual differences for the marks on the same buckle, let alone between buckles ! We may have...

David Beasley of the Goldsmiths Company has kindly informed me that there is "a pencil note in the library copy of Grimwade to the effect that he [ Grimwade ] has got the wrong Harrison as an apprentice". It seems that he may have been " the William Harrison, goldsmith, who was made a...

My shortlist for this mark on a buckle would be Joseph Sutton, Joseph Stainforth , John Stone , James Smith, John Stocker, (all with marks registered as bucklemakers pre 1785 ) ,James Sutton , Joseph Steward (No 2) or James Stamp. Your suggestion of Stephen Joyce is certainly not impossible. The pro...

I thnk that "probably Henry Plumpton " attribution would be more correct, although "almost certainly " is almost as valid in this case .
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I concur it is almost certainly IS rather than SI . There are so many IS marks possible though ! My guess is James Stamp or James Sutton but they are only the most likely of several possibilities. One problem is that bucklemakers were notoriously an ill discipline lot , even for a era where strict a...

I am in UK and cannot get any I have tried. I have used Internet Explorer and Firefox with equal lack of success.
I think the little green men in my computer are all against me as usual.

My experience is the same as magpie's . I've also tried via Google books and got a bit of "Old London Silver: Its History, Its Makers and Its Marks by Montague Howard 1903 " but no more than a few bits
Help us poor people please !

Quote Attribution isn't and can't be an exact science...because in absence of prime evidence many attributions are based on the balance of probability. Quite! In a Court of Law there are two standards of proof. For a Civil case proof is on the balance of probabilities - because a decision must be ma...

I think David Shlosberg's attribution of the mark is probably correct. David found many such marks on sugar nips, and on balance of probabilities decided it was almost certainly Plumpton. Certainly many nips had the 1761 Plumpton marks, so he was a maker of such things Grimwade 3608 would have been ...

Trev - you're brilliant. I'm sure thats right
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I have never discovered what a "shirt buckle" is, although I think I know what a "stock or garter clasp joined" is (and they almost always are assayed and pay duty!)

But what, pray, are " jointed night ear rings of gold " ?
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The assay and date marks are for Chester and 1911/12 The maker is George NATHAN and Ridley HAYES, trading as Nathan & Hales of Howard Street, Birmingham. I believe they may also have had a London registered mark. It was quite typical of the better, or those wishing to seem better, Birmingham mak...

John Bannister - comedian

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Many thanks Trev ! Can we have more of this sort of thing please ? Quite a few of us spend hours researching very obscure silver matters - much of it of interest to very few people. When we die, our executors throw it all away. Very often it's the poor research that gets published, because the best ...

dognose has a very interesting report of a case which relates to this at
viewtopic.php?t=14929&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=
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I have slight reservations on both the makers mark and the Lion Passant Guardant. I could be being overcautious but both punches look slightly wrong for Richard Bayley and a London 1740-1756 assay mark. I initially though perhaps Newcastle but cannot force the makers mark into any of the known marks...