What a Hallmark Actually Is

A hallmark is not a decoration, and it is not a maker's signature in the modern sense. It is a legal guarantee, struck by an assay office after the metal has been tested, confirming that a piece meets a recognised standard of purity. Britain has been doing this since the late thirteenth century, which is why our silver carries the most detailed and trustworthy set of marks in the world. Where an American piece might simply say "sterling", a British piece will usually tell you who made it, which office tested it, what standard it meets and, in most cases, the exact year it was assayed.

That last point is the collector's delight. Few objects from the past come with a date stamp built into them, and once you can read a date letter, a family spoon or a battered teapot stops being anonymous.

The Four Marks You Should Always Look For

Most British silver from the mid-eighteenth century onwards carries a small cluster of marks, usually in a neat row. Look for these four:

• Maker's mark — the initials of the silversmith or workshop, originally a device but from 1739 usually initials alone. It tells you who made it, not where it was sold.
• Assay office mark — a symbol identifying the town where the piece was tested, such as the leopard's head for London, an anchor for Birmingham or a rose for Sheffield.
• Standard mark — the purity guarantee, most often the lion passant for sterling silver.
• Date letter — a single letter, changed each year, indicating the year of assay.

From 1784 to 1890 you will often see a fifth mark: the duty mark, a tiny profile of the reigning monarch, showing the tax on silver had been paid. Its presence, or absence, is a useful cross-check on your date.

Reading the Assay Office Symbol

Each assay town used its own device, and these are worth learning by sight. London's leopard's head is the oldest, worn crowned until 1822 and uncrowned thereafter. Birmingham used an anchor, Sheffield a rose (with a crown added in 1975), Edinburgh a castle, Glasgow a tree with a salmon and a bell, and Dublin a crowned harp alongside the figure of Hibernia.

Several offices closed as the trade changed: Chester, with its sword between three wheat sheaves, stopped in 1962; Exeter's three-towered castle disappeared in 1888; Newcastle's three castles in 1884. Provincial marks are often a little scarcer and a little more interesting for that reason. If you find a piece with an unfamiliar symbol, do not assume it is a fake — it may simply come from a short-lived office.

The Standard Mark: How Pure Is Your Silver?

For most of us, the lion passant is the mark that matters. A walking lion facing left, it denotes sterling silver of 925 parts per thousand, and it has appeared on English silver since 1544. Scottish sterling uses a lion rampant instead — upright rather than walking — which is an easy way to tell a Scottish piece at a glance.

Between 1697 and 1720, silversmiths were required to work to a higher standard of 958 parts per thousand, and the lion was replaced by a figure of Britannia. Britannia standard remained optional afterwards, so a Britannia mark after 1720 usually means a good maker working to a finer standard. Watch out for pieces stamped only with words such as "silver plated", "EPNS" or "A1" — those are electroplate over base metal and contain no solid silver at all. "Nickel silver" and "German silver" are likewise silver in name only.

Decoding Date Letters

Date letters run in cycles of twenty, using the alphabet from A to U and omitting the letter J. Each year the letter changes, and each cycle the font, the letter's shape and the surrounding shield are altered as well. That is how you tell a London "T" of one cycle from a "T" of the next twenty years later. The system is deliberately complicated, and no single letter means the same year in every town: a Birmingham "c" and a London "c" are entirely different dates.

So the letter alone will not help you. You must first identify the assay office, then match the letter to that office's table. Published pocket guides of hallmark tables are inexpensive, small enough to keep in a pocket and organised town by town. Once you have the office and the letter, you have your year.

Practical Checks and Common Traps

Marks are usually found on flat bases, the sides of a body, stems, rims, the backs of handles and inside lids. Take a 10x loupe and look in good daylight. A few cautions will save you money:

• Do not over-polish. Abrasive creams wear marks down until they are unreadable, and once gone they cannot be recovered.
• Beware pseudo marks. From the Victorian period onwards, pieces were deliberately stamped with convincing-looking lions and castles to deceive. Genuine marks are usually crisply struck and evenly spaced.
• Check imported pieces. From 1867, foreign silver entering Britain received UK import marks, often including the letter F, alongside its original marks.
• Small items may be under-marked. Very light pieces were sometimes struck with fewer marks, or the marks were lost to wear.

Finally, remember what hallmarks do and do not tell you. They confirm maker, place, purity and date, but not value. That rests on form, condition, rarity and the maker's reputation. If a piece matters to you, a specialist dealer or an auction house valuer will read the marks happily and often freely. Armed with a loupe and a date table, though, you can do most of the detective work yourself — and there are few nicer ways to spend an afternoon than dating your grandmother's teaspoons.