Is it the mark of the beast? Or the hallmark of the English Lion?

One of the keys to understanding silver holloware, is being able to decipher the manufacturer's marks on the bottom of the piece you are viewing.  This should come as no surprise if you are a regular watcher of British Antiques Roadshow as Mr. Bowen is apt to do.  Makers marks are common in sculpture, ceramics and jewelry.

The best the world over at doing this are the English.  The love of sterling silver is in their DNA.  Prior to around 1914, their pocket change was sterling silver, not the .900 fine that was popular in many countries.  Their coinage was in fact .925.  Typically, in American sterling silver, the hallmarks are few.  Usually, a stamp with the word "Sterling" or a number of .925.  Occasionally, their will be a manufacturers own date stamp as to when the item was made.  Reed & Barton and Gorham did this.  As I said, the English are the best at this.

When the English mark a piece of sterling, they tell you alot about it.  The first hallmark of interest is the English Lion.  This mark tells you that the piece is .925 silver.  Another mark tells you the date the piece was manufactured.  Another hallmark tells you where the piece was manufactured by means of a city mark.  Finally, there is the hallmark of the maker itself.  To give you an idea how serious the English are about this, consider how they mark an Albert chain (i.e. a watch chain).  Each link of the chain has an English lion hallmark!

The English thoroughness in marking the various parts of a piece is very helpful to the consumer.  It helps guarantee that the piece has all the original parts to it.  Classic example is a colonial tankard.  With all the flapping around of the lid over the years, they tend to get damaged.  Sometimes the lid will be replaced with one from another era.  The hallmarks give this away.

Their are other percentages of purity out there.  Coin silver is just that, a piece made from melted coins.  Usually this means .900 fine silver, but beware.  Various countries used their own idea of purity.  Even the English switched to a fineness of .500 after 1914.  German silver is usually .800 fine.  This is why it always important to examine a piece to determine exactly what it is.  If it is an English piece, look for the mark of that regal beast-the lion.

The Russians are Coming! Or is it the English?

There are several types of table service. What type suits you will probably depend upon the type with which you are most familiar.  Some have names referring to their country of origin.  Others are generic in nature.  Mr. Bowen is most familiar with the English style.  Not that Mr. Bowen is necessarily English, but rather he's butlerless.

Russian service starts with the butler placing a warm dinner plate in front of each guest.  Presumably, in the U.S., this would be from the left.  In England, the dinner plate would come from the right.  The butler then brings a platter to the table and serves each guest.

English service is one in which the host serves the meal.  The host serves the food onto each guests' plate.  The plate is then passed to the guest.  Best if this type of service is used for smaller dinner parties.

French service differs slightly from Russian service in that the butler approaches from the left and offers a platter of food with the serving utensils facing the guest.  The guest then serves themselves and takes as much or as little food as they wish.

There are other types of table service-buffet or family style which don't require a butler.  The main difference here is the location of the food.  The buffet style has a table off to the side for the food.  The guests take their plates to this table and serve themselves.  This was the most common style in Mr. Bowen's house growing up.

Family style is simply placing all the food, plates and cutlery on the dining table. Everyone serves themselves.  Friends of Mr. Bowen who grew up in large families with this style of service became very adept at serving themselves in a timely manner.  If seconds were desired, that meant eating the first go around in a timely manner as well.  If you don't know who these people are from among your group of friends, they are the ones at a restaurant who are doing the talking and finish before you do.

Mr. Bowen's Favorite Centerpiece (after 5 P.M.)

Mr. Bowen's experience in building centerpieces up from the traditional sterling bowl leaves a great deal to be desired.  Case in point: two failures at placing at the local county fair in the tablesetting contest (i.e. table decorating contest).  Mr. Bowen's tablesetting was flawless, his table decorating was abysmal.

Mr. Bowen's favorite centerpiece doesn't require any special talent or decorating skills.  Mr. Bowen's favorite centerpiece isn't really a centerpiece at all.  It's a candelabra.  Using a candelabra as your centerpiece has several advantages.  Besides being a traditional source of light, it is a very versatile piece of holloware.

Most candelabras whether they are 3 or 5 candle models, are changeable into individual candlesticks and candelabras of varying heights.  When candelabras are purchased in pairs, this works out well. 

One of the challenges in table construction is space management.  Using candelabras give the tablemaster a versatile tool in space management and construction of the table. 

Sterling silver is the preferred material for a candelabra.  Sterling silver's reflective qualities make it ideal for candle light.  If you are not a talented table decorator, using a candelabra in lieu of the traditional sterling bowl may be the way to go.

Pewter: Seems like it would be easy to polish

As you are aware, Mr.Bowen buys his pewter ware in the secondary online marketplace. Consequently, some of the pieces he buys need a good polishing.  Unlike sterling silver, pewter is not so straight forward to clean. Pewter is a soft metal alloy whose primary metal is tin.  It scratches easily and bends if you drop it.  Most of Mr. Bowen's pewter dinner plates all have knife scratches on them.  If you use too strong of an abrasive material to polish pewter, you might add additional scratches.

You might buy specialized pewter polish.  A less expensive alternative would be to buy Bar Keepers Friend.  It looks like a powder cleanser. However, it seems to have the right amount of abrasive material for pewter-not too little and not too much.

Since pewter is so soft, Bar Keepers Friend will clean and polish your pewter, but you may not get the level of shine you would like depending upon the surface finish that the manufacturer originally put on the pewter.

As a result, you will need to find something less abrasive to do the final polish.  Mr. Bowen uses car polish for this step.  If you are expecting that your pewter will polish to a high gloss and shine, you will be disappointed.  However, you may find you will get a satisfactory result.  The good news is that pewter doesn't tarnish like sterling.  You can use soap and water to clean it and that generally is enough to maintain the surface for a long time.

Pewter: You don't have to get the lead out

Mr. Bowen's holloware interests are not limited to sterling silver alone.  He has a pewterware collection as well.  Why bother having pewterware when you have sterling?  Simple.  Variety.  Pewterware is very cheap when purchased in the online arena.  That is especially true when you consider what new pewterware costs and even when you compare it to the original selling prices of 35 plus years ago.

Pewterware has been around a great while.  When we think of pewter, we tend to think of it in terms of the colonial era.  When an American thinks of pewter, the first word that pops into their head is lead.  Yes, colonial American pewtersmiths in the 1700s did mix lead into their pewter.  Great Britain did not allow the export of raw tin, the chief ingredient of pewter, to the colonies.  The only source of tin for the Americans was used pewterware.  This was melted down and reused.  Since tin is very soft, additional metal needs to be added to make it more durable.  As a result, unless you are eating off of antique American pewterware from the 1700s, you are not going to get lead poisoning.

Mr. Bowen's favorite manufacturer of pewterware is Reed & Barton.  Since it's inception as firm and until its demise in 1999, Reed & Barton manufactured a variety of flatware, and holloware in pewter..  The major problem with pewter is that when dropped, it might just dent or become out of wack unless it is thick.  Case in point are the P232 water goblets from Reed & Barton.  These originally sold for $22.50 each during the 1970s.  You can pick these up for less than half that price on Ebay.  Sometimes really cheap if someone dropped it and it became malformed.  One of Mr. Bowen's favorite tricks is to buy malformed pewter at 10 cents on the dollar and bend it back into shape.  So far, it has worked every time.  All you need is a pair of hands and a level flat table.

Pewter plates are kind of a fun alternative to china or everyday ware.  Be sure to remind your guests that stainless steel flatware is a much harder material than pewter and can be easily scratched.  Reed & Barton's P240 dinner plate, their P241 salad plate and P242 bread plates are simple in appearance and durable to use often.  Unlike their earlier American cousin, the alloy is 92% tin, and 8% antimony and bismuth.  This alloy is known as Britannia and is the standard for good quality pewter 250 years ago until today.  The online prices for these plates are once again cheaper than the original selling prices and far cheaper than buying new from bespoke pewtersmiths today.  To give you an idea of the current prices for pewter pieces, a simplier goblet to the P232 sells for about $75 each.

All the other usual holloware-candlesticks, butter dishes, salt & pepper shakers, bread trays etc. are available in pewter as well.  In my next post, we'll talk about cleaning pewter.