two little stick men

[jvcjr]

i have a set of silverware that i brought back from germany in 1964, all of ththise pieces have the inital in a square wmf, to the rt of these initials there is a square with [90] in it and also a diamond <27> in it, there is a name on the larger pieces that says "friodur". below all of this there are two little stick men as i call them. can some one help me. what does the word friodur mean, and what about these different numbers in these squares and diamonds. thanks--john carney

[2209patrick]

I think Wurttembergische Metallwarenfabrik (WMF) Geislingen, Germany produced mostly silver plated items.
Friodur is a trademark of the J. A. Henckels company located in Solingen, Germany. They advertise that blade density is improved using the Friodur ice-hardening process on stainless steel knives. The two "stickmen" are on their logo.

[admin]

90 = thickness of silverplating, not sure how the grading works, but I think it is explained in another post. Use the forum search function with 90 as the query, it should show up in the results.

Tom

[Bahner]

Hello, the Friodur-process was invented and patented by Henckels in the late 1930ies, but due to the war it was not introduced on a large scale until the early 1950ies. The WMF company bought its blades from Henckels at that time, that is why its cutlery often has the Friodur-Henckels mark. The '90' indicates the overall-weight of pure silver in Gramm, used for electroplating a dozen table spoons plus a dozen table forks. '27' indicates that only 27 Gramms of silver were used in electroplating the pieces You have. Must be smaller pieces like fruit-knifes, coffee-spoons or the like. Best wishes, Bahner

[jvcjr]

thanks, my german is not very good at all, you would it should be i have been married to a german girl for over 40 yrs, infact the wmf items were given to us in germany around 1960 as wedding gift----thanks john carney--