SILVER PLATE.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 19, Issue 1442, 30 September 1872, Page 2

SILVER PLATE.

The following, from the British TradaJournal, will be of interest to all who possess silver plate :—lf we will take the trouble to examine any piece of London-made silver plate, we shall find that it is stamped with five marks, which are legally required to show that the piece in question is sterling silver manufactured within the metropolitan district. These marks, to an uninitiated, person, will be as gibberish, but if he recognises any ot them the first will be the head of the reigning Sovereign, the second he may perhaps discover to be a leopard's head crowned, the third a lion passant gardant, the fourth one of the letters of the alphabet, and the fifth, certain initials which we may inform, him are those of the maker's Christian and surname. These are the marks to be found on all ordinary pieces of sterling silver; but if we go a little further back, to the year 1784, when George 111. was king, we shall fin& that before that date the Sovereign's, head is missing among the marks, and for a very good reason, because its. presence demotes a duty of 6d per oz., which from that time has been charged on all manufactured silver. It is, however, true that from 1719 to 1758 a duty of equal amount has been charged on such silver; but, so far as platemarks are concernrd, thi* fact does not interest us, because there was nothing in the marks to indicate the imposition of the duty. Before 1784, therefore* all manufactured silver within the London district bore four marks, and. this is the first letter in the collector's alphabet. No piece of London-made plate bearing five marks can be older than 1784. And now let us consider these five marks. What do they represent 1 The fifth as we have already seen, indicates a sixpenny duty, levied fince 1784; the fourth is called the data mark, and is a letter of the alphabet, which is changed eveiy year on May 30, when the Assay year begins. In each alphabet so employed only twenty letters are used, from A. to U or V inclusive, but always excepting I, W, X, Y, and Z. Here the qnes* tion arises, but what happens when the twenty letters of an alphabet are exhausted ? The answer is that the fashion of the alphabet is changed,; but the letters in each alphabet run on from year to year in the same order. For instance, we are now at r in a small black-letter alphabet of which the firal letter began in 1856-7; that is to say,, it began on May 30, 1856, and was used until the 29th of the same month in 1857 Before that year we had a series of twenty black-letter capitals. For twenty years before 1836-7 the alphabet was small Roman, taking us back to 1816; then going back to 1796, we had . Roman capitals Between 1796-7 and 1776-7 came an earlier series of twenty small Roman letters. In 1756 began a series of black-letter capitals; in 1736 another small Roman series; and in 1716 a series of Roman capitals. In 1696 began one of those alphabets which avo the confusion of collectors; this was an alphabet of what is called court hand being in reality,, the old running hand employed by law writei\s in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen* nries, of which it may be said that though it be a ruuning hand it is anything but one that he that runs may read, for a more crabbed character, and one less like a respectable alphabet, it is impossible to eoncei ve. Ho we ver, there it is beginning in the year 1696, and with it many of the finest pieces of William and Anne's time are stamped.