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Hello

I bought 2 skewers, one with 1er Coq for the French "départements" (not Paris), the other with the 1er Viellard for "départements".
The garatny mark on the latter is the head with the département's number, 10.









Can someone tell me what départemenet this is?
Can you also give me the list of the numbers of the départements at the time, which is not the same as today?

Can you also give me information about the maker, Le Clair ?

Thank you in advance.

François

Hello François,

The department number is for Aude, Carcassonne (5th division South).
Sorry, but the maker is unknown for me.

Kind Regards

Thank you !

Aude is now 11 !

Hi François,

Can you also give me the list of the numbers of the départements at the time, which is not the same as today?

Source: Old French Plate, Its Makers and Marks by Wilfred Joseph Cripps - 1898

Regards Trev.

Thanks for the list of French departments !

Do you know if it is the same for Revolutionary, Empire, and restauration silverware, between 1798 and 1838?

It is not. You have to make sure you are using the correct list corresponding to the marks on the piece; the département numbers were different for each series of marks in 1798, 1809 & 1819. (Département numbers were not used in the marks from 1838.) The Empire in particular saw a large expansion of départements as parts of present-day Belgium, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Netherlands were annexed to France.

I do have a "master list" which I have compiled that shows the numbers of each assay office during each period, as well as their opening and closing dates: the Carcassonne office, for instance, opened on 6 Apr 1799, was #11 in 1798 & 1809, #10 in 1819, and closed on 26 Mar 1862. I'd offer to post the full list, but I would have no idea how to do it: it has nearly 200 offices on it, each with up to six different numbers or codes (including the Empire-era lettered offices, the complicated regional codes of 1819 and the post-1838 cyphers.)

Here's the 1819 - 1838 list:





Source: Old French Plate, Its Makers and Marks by Wilfred Joseph Cripps - 1898

Trev.

Thanks a lot !

This is helpful !

Can you please explain why there are some numbers with * and some with ** ?

Thanks

Hi François,

These tables link with the others. The only details regarding the asterisk are at the bottom of the pages.





Trev.

Hello Trev

Thanks a lot for the scans of these pages !

The asterisk on these two pages does not refer to the département numbers; it stipulates in the footnote that you have to replace the * on the first page (for instance, next to the hare's head for small objets in silver) with the correspondent punch mark on the next page (for instance, a butterfly if the item was made in the North).


What I think regarding the * and ** after the département number, is that * and ** serves to distinguish between the different assay offices in the same département : for the Nord, you have Lille, Valencienne and Dunkerque ; if you only punch the département number (i.e. 57) you cannot know at what assay office in the Nord the object was controlled ; so you need a differenciation mark : Lille is 57, Valencienn 57* and Dunkerque 57**
Does that make sense?
Same goes for all numbers with more than one assay office in the département.

François