LION BROTHERS Tablespoon

[SilverSurfer]

Might anyone recognize this maker's mark on an 8 1/4 inch fiddle and thread tablespoon?



TIA for any info on this maker!

SS
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[silverly]

M L Lion, H Lion, and S Lion are all jewelers listed in New Orleans in 1850.

Moses L Lion and Herbert L Lion, Lion & Brother jewelers 169 Broadway are listed in the 1857 New York City Directory.
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[SilverSurfer]

Thank you, silverly! So this appears to be a retailer's mark as opposed to a maker's mark. And now, New Orleans or New York? Well, since I'm the potential seller, obviously it's New Orleans. Ha! Thank you again for the enlightenment!

SS
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[silverly]

Well it's a starting place at best and better than nowhere at all.

I have to guess your piece could be New Orleans because it's marked brothers and not & brother. Going by their age at that time, no more than mid twenties, these brothers weren't in New Orleans too many years.

I lean toward retailer just because it would have been so much simpler to make an order than to manufacture their own spoons in the mid nineteenth century, but with three of them and any help that might have had to do the work, I don't know at this point.
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