www.925-1000.com

The marks of Bristol Plate Company (round seal on hollowares, straight name on flatwares) have come to be linked as a trademark line of the large Pairpoint Manufacturing Company. From what I can find, all the flatwares seem to fall within the area of novelty or service pieces and not as regular tablewares. The style of this is somewhat dissimilar to anything in the normal body shapes of Pairpoint, and the design ("Olive") is not matched to one of their patterns. What's more, the underlying metal appears clearly through plating wear spots to be full brass (or at least copper based). And the embossed design is largely an alteration of an image that had been around for at least the latter half of the nineteenth century, so dating would be at best difficult. Is it possible that Pairpoint was actually getting these items from an outside source, perhaps even Bristol Brass and Clock through one of their factories?








The embossing (acid etched?) and an earlier common version:

I should point out that this is also like the images used by the Hartford Fire Insurance Company of Hartford Connecticut, the same state in which Bristol is located. The company dates back to 1810 origins, but there is no clear connection to this item.