2     Hallmarks on Silver Toys

 

 

 

I

t was not until Charles II came to the throne that English coinage ceased being handmade. Until then, all pieces of coinage were stamped with a hammer and clipped to shape with shears. This was most unsatisfactory as there was no regulation size or weight for each coin manufactured and it became an easy way for anyone who felt inclined to make their own money by clipping a bit off each silver coin. When they thought they had sufficient they would then take it along to the silversmith, who would be willing to pay a good sum for the clippings. Alternatively the clippings could be handed over to a forger who would melt them down and, with a forged set of stamps and die, make their own money.

Silver was in very short supply after the English Civil War, the demand for money was so high that it was more profitable to take one’s silver clippings along to a silversmith who would be delighted to pay the value of a coin and sometimes even more. The penalty if one was caught was very severe and usually resulted in branding with a hot iron or being hanged on Holborn Hill where many a criminal finished up.

 

 

The Tower of London became the Mint

Horse-driven machines were used to produce perfectly round coins of standard thickness. And an inscription marked around the coins circumference of each coin ensured that there was no chance of clipping the coin without damaging it.

It was unfortunate that the old-style clipped coins were in circulation at the same time as the new ones. This also meant that there was nearly twice the coinage on the streets as was wanted by the Mint. The public didn’t want to part with their old clipped type coins, and they hid them away and didn’t use any of the new coins that came their way.

4 May 1697 was declared the last day for clipped coins to be handed in. The Treasury, which was then in Whitehall, was the collection point, and ten furnaces were set up to melt the out of date coinage. It was melted down into silver ingots. This collecting and melting down lasted several weeks but it was found that the true value of silver received once melted down was far below the expected value because the silver had been mixed with more than the authorised amount of copper for sterling silver.

The public weren’t interested in the new coins and continued clipping pieces from the old currency. They hoarded the new coins; it was far more lucrative to pay for goods with the old coins, and save the new ones. As a result, clipping continued for a long time until all the old coins had been gathered in and melted down.

It was recorded that at one stage £52,000 worth of coinage had been collected in, but once it had been melted down it was only worth half of its proper silver value. People hung on to their old coins until the last day of collection and as a consequence large crowds would gather, trying to ensure their coins made the deadline. New problems arose because the issue of new coins was a very slow process and people who had handed in coins had to wait a long time before they received the new ones. This resulted in a shortage of money everywhere which affected everyone regardless of whether they were rich or poor, and the value of silver continued to rise. As they had no money to spend they had to live on credit – if they could get it.

The standard of silverware had existed from ad 1300 to 1696. However after the Civil War an Act of Parliament was passed which raised the grade of silver on 25 March 1697 to a higher level. This new grade was to be used from that date and all pieces of silver plate had to be stamped with the figure of Britannia. Because of a shortage of silver plate after the Civil War, the goldsmiths started using the silver coins of the realm to make vessels of silver, thus depleting the country’s coinage. Parliament was petitioned to stop this misuse of silver coins. This act made the standard for items made in silver plate higher than that of the coinage. This increase in purity for Britannia silver was raised from 92.5 to 95.84 and stayed that way until rescinded in 1720.

The stamp of Britannia replaced the lion passant, which until then was the mark of sterling silver. Another mark was used with Britannia, which was the ‘lion’s head erased’ (meaning that the lion’s head had been cut off) and which replaced the leopard’s head. This meant the goldsmiths had to use the Britannia silver and stop using the old coinage as their source of silver.

There were other changes to the assay marks. One was the introduction of the year letters, a year earlier than normal. (The year mark was another mark added to the assay marks on silver and it showed the year in which the product was made. This was alphabetical, each letter showing a different year, and each year the style of lettering also changed.) The other was the new maker’s mark, which had to be the first two letters of their surname, not their initial as it had been up until then.

The hallmarking of early Georgian silver toys bears the marks of the initials of the toymaker. Some examples of those marks are:

 

·         1665

·         FC 1609

·         CK with a mitre above 1686

·         WP 1689

 

In the mid eighteenth century the toymakers were producing toys in Britannia silver, which was a higher grade plate. Their names and dates include:

·         Joseph Smith, 1707

·         Jacob Margas, 1708

·         James Godwin, 1710

·         James Morson, 1720

 

There were at least another ten toysmiths who continued making toys.

Mathew Boulton (1728–1809) produced fine-quality toys from his workshop in Soho Birmingham, and anyone who is fortunate enough to find or own one is indeed a lucky person.

Mathew was in partnership with another very skilled toymaker named John Fothergill. The toys were stamped MB IF in two separate shields whilst both were active. When the partnership broke up in 1782 only the initial MB was used.

According to Birmingham Assay Office there are no registered toymakers in Birmingham today. They did, however, become established in Birmingham between the years 1770–1780. By now many machines had taken over a lot of the hard work in silversmithing of toys. The toymen could now buy and assemble press-shaped units, which they combined together with handmade parts.

Sterling silver came back into circulation in 1720 and Britannia silver continued along with it for ten years. It was then phased out until it was revived for a short while in late Victorian times. The leopard’s head replaced the lion’s head erased in 1975.

Outside London, the provinces were given the right to have an assay office and stamp their own silver, providing they were producing coins of the realm. Before 1697 many centres used marks. The maker’s mark became very prominent, sometimes being stamped on a piece more than once. Date letters were also found stamped by some cities including York.

The Britannia standard of silver was introduced in 1697, although it is unfortunate that no provision was made for its use in the provinces; technically it was illegal for the provinces to mark silver. However they did, and in doing so added greater confusion because they altered the shape and design of the characters they were then using, making them very awkward to recognise even today.

A new Act was passed by Parliament which allowed any city which had a mint to assay stamp their own silver. The Act, dated 1701, allowed Chester, Bristol, Exeter, Norwich and York to stamp silver.

The Act was a very bad mistake because it not only included Bristol and Norwich, which did not have a mint, but excluded from the list Newcastle which was one of the most important cities and one which had its own mint.

Because of these mistakes, particularly in the omission of Newcastle, a new Act was passed in 1702. From that period onwards all towns and cities that required items of silver marked had to send them to their nearest assay office. By 1883 all the provincial towns had stopped using the leopard’s head. Only London continued to use it to show that was where an item had originated. It was, and is today, the lion passant which is the recognised sign of sterling silver.

It is interesting to note that the leopard’s head was stamped on bars of gold as well as silver and was not confined to London but was used throughout the country. Despite the laws regarding the leopard’s head, unscrupulous goldsmiths continued to try and cheat the system by stamping their own leopard’s head marks on substandard pieces of silver.

 

 


The origin of hallmarks

A law was passed in 1363 that every master goldsmith had to have his own mark which he would leave on any piece he had made so that, in the event of dispute, the man responsible could be traced. The marks were registered and were usually small symbols which were personal to that particular goldsmith. It wasn’t until the late fifteenth century that the goldsmith’s personal initials were used instead of a symbol. This made his work much easier to recognise.

   In 1478 another letter was added which was known as the date stamp, although it was never originally intended to be such, but a means of tracing the assay master should a piece be found to be substandard. As the assay master was changed each May, a new letter was allocated to each one in succession. It is therefore easy to see how the particular letter could be found and matched to a corresponding year. That is how today we are able to trace the year the item was made (unless the hallmark on the silver was a forgery).