Postby Bahner » Sat Feb 24, 2007 6:02 am
Hello, this is going to be a bit long, I am afraid, but I feel some people might be interested to learn more details about this. It refers to Germany only.
Those needles that Hose_dk mentioned were also used in Germany. The method was called “Strichprobe” and the stone on which it was performed was called “Probierstein” . Either the colours of the silvery lines on the stone were simply compared, or a special combination of acids was applied so see how quickly the lines dissolved and whether there appeared bubbles during this process or not. So with this method one could also tell silver from other silvery metals. But all in all the method was not too exact. That is why the other method was used much more often.
It is called “Kupellenprobe”, the zigzag-line is most often called “Tremolierstrich”. “Tremolieren” is an oldfashioned German word for “shaking” - it looks like the person did it with a shaking hand. Sometimes one can also find the version “Tremulierstich” - “stich” referring to the fact, that silver was actually cut out of the object (“ausgestochen”). That the cut was not done in a straigt line had a reason. The technique of melting silver back then was not highly developed. The fineness of a silver piece was simply not that homogenous as it would be today. If one would cut out silver from a piece in three different places and checked the fineness, it was likely that one got three different results. In one or two places the fineness would be too low, in another place it could be much higher, but the the average of all three samples would be correct. By zigzagging one was likely to cut through the portions with the lower and higher fineness and would thus achieve a good average result, which would be close enough to the actual fineness.
The warden did not check the fineness piece by piece, he took samples from several pieces of the same maker and would melt down all those samples together. He used a small metal cup for that, called “Kupelle” or “Cupelle”. I believe it was made from iron. By applying chemicals to the melted metal he could separate the silver from the other metals and would finally weigh, after everything had cooled off, the pure silver that remained. By comparing the original weight of the samples to the weight of pure silver finally found, he could tell whether the fineness of the silver used by the maker was correct.
Then stamping it with a town mark or a warden’s mark (however it was done in that particlar city) would imply, that the silversmith would have to pay an additional fee to the warden. Many silversmiths avoided that, that is why one can often find just a number for the Lötigkeit and the Tremolierstrich. The number for the Lötigkeit was usually stamped by the maker himself before he gave it over to the warden for checking. If the fineness was found to be too low, the maker could be heavily fined (some cities had a hand or the head of the silversmith cut off ! Well - that was some time ago... Other cities settled for a huge sum of money) and the objects were destroyed and kept by the authorities to be melted down.
It looks like all to many silversmiths did nor really bother about the consequences of using “bad” (“unterlötiges”) silver. After 1900, when analytical methods had been greatly improved, more and more German affineries had to state that the majority of old silver they received for meltdown had a fineness lower than the guarantee mark would imply. Best wishes, Bahner
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