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My oldest relative died last year. I now seem to find myself in possession of eight pieces of rather plain looking Gorham flatware that no relative seems to know anything about. Monogram on the handle is the letter "M". The four pieces pictured were exceptionally dirty so I polished them to a rather brilliant shine. From best reasonable guesstimation of age, and this is based on lack of knowledge of family and the design of the Gorham anchor symbol, I'm assuming mid-1800's. I saw on this very forum only a few minutes ago a scan of a 1920's ad for a pattern named "Dolly Madison". This pattern look similar, but the necks of my flatware appear much thinner than said pattern.

Another matter I'm not clear on is the matter of the composition. These utensils are evidently silver plated, as the plating has mostly worn off of the business end, but the metal beneath was tarnished black same as the areas where the plating is still intact and shines up with polishing. Could this be silverplate on a lesser grade of silver, perhaps coin silver? The large table/serving spoon is my best reason for wondering as there is no other metal esposed heavily right-handed worn edge of the bowl, nor in a deep scratch in the bowl, nor the pitted marring on the underside of the bowl. I made a great effort to polish out the deep scratch in the bowl of the spoon and found the metal polishes out to be the same color as the rest of the non-plated surface.

Hi ~ welcome to the forums. The lone 'anchor' mark was used on Gorham's electroplated ware, the white base metal would be nickel silver, an alloy of copper, zinc and nickel, your pictures show the slight yellowish tone in comparison to the silver plating. The pattern is 'Old English', the introduction date is referenced as circa 1875, indicating the actual date is unknown, but the pattern was produced for decades.

~Cheryl

Thanks for the reply. Was wondering why the camera flash gave off a gold-tone reflection from the worn areas, thart would certainly explain it. Just read up on Nickel Silver (faux silver) on Wikipedia. Creepy, guess Gorham Company didn't know nickel was toxic back then. Certainly not ever going to use these utensils.

Also, just of note. I looked up "Gorham Old English" on eBay a moment ago and the handles are entirely different on what I saw listed there. Was there a major redesign of the series in the latter years?

You are most likely seeing Gorham's classic sterling pattern, 'Old English Tipt', introduced in 1870.

~Cheryl