Postby silverport » Mon Sep 27, 2010 8:50 pm
The Fish slice is plated — made by »W E D & Co«; somewhere in Britain.
Hello »LynseyOD«
Welcome to the Forum.
Sorry for this maybe bad news for you: The slice is plated only — look to yours photo upper left side; there you could observe the already missing surface of plate, and the basic material is already visible too. But it seems, that »W E D & Co« have used a Nickel Silver alloy as basic material, which has at least a “normal” percentage of Nickel in its alloy composition.
Now some general remarks on maker’s marks:
First sorry, that I couldn’t localize the place, where »W E D & Co« was settled, and their name too. But I’m sure that they were British.
It became usual by many “plated” producers, to copy with their row of 4, 5 or some times more punches, the appearance of markings on silver.
Also here, there fore the letters are being separated, like to be maker’s mark, Assay mark, fineness mark, date letter and duty mark of a historic period.
From about 1897-1898 on, it was British "plated" producers forbidden, to use in their maker’s mark a symbol similar to any of the then usual symbols of the British Assay Offices.
The »Crown«, symbol for Sheffield Assay Office, was forbidden — there fore later some “plated” producer in Sheffield used separated »S« punches as indication for »Sheffield«.
The »Anchor«, symbol for Birmingham Assay Office, was also forbidden — so in Birmingham active producers had to find other forms of a »Birmingham« indication.
If you see an anchor on a “plated” item, then it is, not ever but almost a product of a not British producer; like e.g. »Gorham« in USA.
Let’s hope, that the maker ones could be identified?
Kind regards silverport