London hallmarks marks

Part Marks Additional marks can be applied to signify the various metals which make up the item. Hexagonal spot. Hexagonal staggered spot. Pentagonal spot. Pentagonal staggered spot. Rotating hexagonal spot. Rotating pentagonal spot.

Spaced mark. Spot staggered. Up and down staggered. Commemorative Marks. Common Control and Convention Marks. Then you must use a table of date letters appropriate for that office. At first sight British hallmarking seems very easy to understand, but there are many traps for the unwary. For instance, London Assay Office cycles of date letters started in , using the 20 letters a to u, excluding the letter j which didn't exist at the time.

The Birmingham Assay Office cycles of 25 or 26 date letters started when the Birmingham office was founded in , nearly years later. So it is no wonder that their date letter cycles are different.

And then you must bear in mind that most published tables only show date letters for silver; date letters punched on gold were different. There are lots of examples of British hallmarks on silver on my British hallmarks examples page, but let's make a start with the hallmarks in the picture here, just to get a feel for what a set of British hallmarks looks like. The first thing to note is that there are four distinct marks.

A valid and legal British hallmark on silver or gold must always have at least these four marks. Sometimes there are additional marks to do with duty or a monarch's jubilee, but the four marks described here are the essential ones.

Starting at the top the first mark is a walking lion with raised right forepaw. This is the British "lion passant" which indicates that the silver is of sterling fineness. Below this is a leopard's head, which in this case is the "town mark" of the London Assay Office. To the right is the London "date letter" e, which shows that the item was assayed and hallmarked in or At the bottom is the "sponsor's mark" R. O in rectangular shield, the mark of Richard Oliver , first registered 16 February These marks are each explained in greater detail below, but please be aware of two important points.

First, that British assay offices all used different cycles of date letters, so to read a British hallmark date letter you must first identify at which assay office the item was hallmarked and then use a table of date letters appropriate for that office. Second, that the sponsor's mark shows under whose name an item was submitted for hallmarking, its purpose is not show who made an item.

From the legal requirement for the fineness mark changed from the lion passant on sterling silver to a millesimal mark, i. It is still possible to ask the assay office to strike the traditional lion passant mark but this is no longer a legal requirement.

The assay office charge extra for striking this additional mark so it is not always done, but I like to see the lion, the most recognised of marks for over years, so I have the full set of traditional marks struck on my work.

The lion passant was introduced in in the reign of Henry VIII and I like to think that if King Henry walked into my workshop today he would recognise the all hallmarks on my work apart from the Because of the enormous cost of gold, most of the hallmarks that collectors find are on silver items. Very few private individuals have gold dishes or gold candlesticks in their homes, and for this reason the standard reference books, Bradbury, Chaffers' etc.

This applies particularly to the date letter. Watches are unusual in this regard, because gold watches are quite often purchased or inherited, and are often the only items of gold other than jewellery that a collector will ever see and own. As jewellery, apart from wedding rings, is almost never hallmarked, the hallmarks on gold, particularly the shape of the shield around date letter, are unfamiliar territory to most collectors who know about hallmarks.

The tables of date letters found in most reference books show only the date letters and their shields that were impressed on silver items, although they don't tell you this. The same date letter was used on gold items, but the enclosing shield shape was different from that used on silver. The larger picture here shows a set of hallmarks in an 18 carat gold watch case. There are five distinct marks, although two of them, the crown and the figure 18, are parts of one mark, the standard or fineness mark.

The sponsor's mark AF is at the top, the date letter to the left, the leopard's head of the London Assay Office to the right, and the standard mark in the centre in two parts, a crown and the figure 18 signifying 18 carat gold. When the 18 carat standard was introduced in it was marked with a crown and the number The lion passant remained as the fineness mark used on 22 carat gold from until , which is potentially confusing in the case of silver gilt.

After both standards were marked with a crown and either the number 22 or When the lower standards of 15, 12 and 9 carats were introduced in they were not marked with the crown. Their fineness marks were the carat and its decimal equivalent, i. From the legal requirement for the fineness mark changed from carats, e. It is still possible to ask the assay office to strike the traditional crown mark on gold, but this is no longer a legal requirement. The assay office charge extra for striking this additional mark so it is not always done, but I like to see it so I have a full set of traditional marks struck on my work, and they will strike the crown on 9 carat gold, which surprised me.

Note that the date letter "H" for to struck by the London Assay Office on 22 carat and 18 carat gold is surrounded by a rectangular shield with cut corners. This is different to the shield around the date letter used on silver items. The inset picture of the same date letter "H" from the table of date letters on silver in Bradbury's Book of Hallmarks shows the difference.

The shield shape for the date letter used on silver is "shield" shaped , i. The date letter in the 18 carat gold watch case is rectangular, which is the correct shape for a London Assay Office date stamp on 18 and 22 carat gold for letter cycle XXI. The shields used by the London Assay Office around date letters on 15, 12 and 9 carat gold during this cycle were round. Note that each assay offices had its own unique cycles of date letters so you must use the correct one. Date letters span two calendar years because the punches were changed when new wardens were elected, which was usually at the end of May or June.

See also my note about the shields around date letters. Those on gold may different from those on silver, particularly if they are London Assay Office hallmarks. Most guides only show shield shapes for date letters on silver.

Also different shield shapes were often used for small items, and for watch cases. There is only one book that I am aware of, Jackson's Silver and Gold Marks, that shows the London Assay Office shield shapes used on gold as well as those used on silver, but not even this shows all the shields used on watch cases. You are welcome to email me via my contact page if you need help with a hallmark or date letter.

Let's now have a look at the four parts of a British hallmark in more detail. Watch cases made in Britain from silver or gold were by law subjected to "assay" which simply means "to test" to determine the purity or fineness of the metal and, provided they are of the required standard, stamped with marks showing at least the following four things:. Each assay office has its own unique office or town mark to show where the item was assayed. The exception to this is the London Assay Office.

It is often said that the leopard's head is the town mark of the London office, but this is not strictly true, only if struck with no other town mark does the leopard's head show that the item was hallmarked in London.

Note: In describing the leopard's head as the town mark of the London Assay Office I am following the practice of standard works such as Bradbury and Chaffers, but in reality the leopard's head was and remained the standard mark - the London Assay Office didn't have its own unique town mark. The leopard's head was struck along with the lion passant by the old offices of Chester, Exeter, Newcastle and York from for some time after the sterling standard was reintroduced.

It was only the new offices of Sheffield and Birmingham that used the lion passant alone as the standard mark. So strictly I should say that when the leopard's head is found on its own without a separate additional town mark it can be inferred that the item was hallmarked in London. The early form of the leopard's head looks suspiciously like a lion, because the medieval heralds term for a lion shown passant guardant, i. The depiction of this creature gradually changed over the centuries so that it eventually looked like a leopard.

From until the leopard was pictured wearing a crown, since then he has been without the crown or mane. The reason these were omitted is not known. It might be thought strange that Birmingham, set in the middle of the England and about as far from the sea as you can get, would use an anchor for its symbol. This is said to go back to when silversmiths from Birmingham and Sheffield petitioned Parliament for their own assay offices so that they wouldn't have to send items to London to be marked.

Each town adopted one of these signs as its mark and they tossed a coin to decide which; Sheffield got the crown and Birmingham the anchor. From the Birmingham and Sheffield Assay Offices were authorised to assay and mark silver.

Birmingham was authorised to assay and mark gold in , using the anchor town mark for both gold and silver. Sheffield was authorised to assay and mark gold in and then used two town marks - the crown for silver and the rose for gold. Use of the crown on gold was reserved for the standard mark of 22 carat gold. The emblem of Glasgow can be traced back to the legend of Saint Mungo, the founder and patron saint of the city of Glasgow. After 1 June very different town marks were used for imported watch cases, which you can read about on my page about Import Hallmarks.

The leopard's head was the first standard mark, not a town mark, and it wasn't superseded by the lion passant when that came into use in The London Assay Office did not have an office or town mark and, speaking technically, it never has.

The leopard's head and the lion passant were both standard marks applied by the London Assay Office. If there is no town mark of another assay office, then it is implied that the item was hallmarked at the London Assay Office.

When the provincial assay offices were set up, each had a unique town mark to identify it, usually the arms of the town. This was stamped along with the leopard's head standard mark. After and the restoration of the sterling standard of silver, the lion passant and leopard's head were both marked by provincial assay offices as standard marks until the leopard's head fell out of use for reasons unknown. Until London was the only office that marked the leopard's head and lion passant on silver.

This is particularly the case for items that were produced abroad and imported to Britain. This shows the location of the Assay office that the item was tested at and hallmarked.

Note this does not necessarily indicate the place of manufacture, just where it was tested and hallmarked. This shows the legal standard of purity of the metal.

For gold, it is either a crown and the carat fineness, e. The mark does not show the specific results of the assay of an item. However, it does confirm that it is at least as fine as the standard marked. This shows the year when the item was hallmarked.

It is important to note that each Assay office had its own unique range of date letters. You must use be able to identify the Town Mark to be able to correctly date an item. In Britain gold or silver watch cases, regardless of the country of manufacture, should always have been assayed and hallmarked in a British assay office.

However, hallmarking of imported watch cases was not strictly enforced by Customs before However, the vast majority of foreign watch cases were imported into Britain either without hallmarks at all, or with hallmarks from their country of origin. In contrast, the foreign watch cases makers did not want to have the risk of their product seeming inferior.

Therefore many bypassed the British assay offices. British practice changed in when the hallmarking of foreign-made cases was strictly enforced by Customs. The hallmarks used by the assay offices on the foreign watch cases were clearly different from those used on watch cases made in the UK.

The town mark used on imported watches became the zodiac symbol, Leo, on a crossed background in an oval shield. The new town marks were used from 1 June on imported watch cases to distinguish them from watch cases made in Britain.

Another indication, for foreign-made silver cases, is that the silver standard is marked as in an oval shield rather than by the traditional lion passant mark for sterling silver made in Britain. The image below has been taken from my J W Benson silver fusee pocket watch, I apologise for the quality of the image, but I am not a photographer. There was a considerable amount of zoom required to get the hallmarks visible. The heavy scratching in the photograph is actually very faint to the naked eye.

In the same way that the symbol of Leo was introduced as a new town mark for the London Assay Office to use on imported items, other British assay offices used different town marks for imported items.

Decimal fineness marks were used on imported gold as well as silver in place of the traditional British symbols. The date letters used on imported items were the same as those used on native items, and each assay office continued with its own unique sequence of date letters.

To go to my page about British import hallmarks click on this link: British import hallmarks. The marks shown here, the walking lion passant of sterling silver, the leopard's head, and a date letter, are traditional British hallmarks on silver with origins that go back to the year in the reign of King Edward I. The lion passant, the walking lion with raised right forepaw, was introduced during the reign of King Henry VIII, the king who had six wives.

Gold items were marked with similar hallmarks, with a crown or numbers identifying the gold standard. A valid and legal British hallmark in a nineteenth or twentieth century watch case must have four marks; sponsor's mark, town mark, standard mark and date letter. For clarity this picture does not include the sponsor's mark, but a set of British hallmarks is not valid without a sponsor's mark.

British hallmarks like this were applied to all gold and silver items made in Britain, and they were also applied to some foreign watches between about and until the English watchmakers got this stopped.

If you have such a foreign watch with native British hallmarks, you can read about this on Foreign watches with British hallmarks. After 1 June all imported gold and silver watches were assayed and hallmarked in British assay offices but they were not marked with the traditional British hallmarks, instead new British import hallmarks were stamped on imported watches.

The leopard's head shown here, when used on its own, is the mark of the London Assay Office at Goldsmith's Hall. Other assay offices have their own "town marks"; symbols that show where the item was assayed and hallmarked. The town marks most often seen on English watches are the leopard's head of London, an anchor for the Birmingham assay office, and a sword between three wheat sheaves for the Chester assay office, most used by Liverpool watchmakers.

To go to my full page about British hallmarks click on this link: British hallmarking. In order to send any item to a British assay office to be tested and hallmarked, a person had first to enter their details and a unique punch mark at the assay office they wanted to use. The punch mark is usually the registered person's initials within a shaped shield.

This is called the "sponsor's mark" and is one of the four parts of a legal British hallmark. The sponsor's mark was applied to each item before it was submitted for hallmarking, and can tell us interesting information about where a watch case was made, or imported a watch.

This mark is sometimes erroneously called the "maker's mark" due to misunderstanding its exact purpose and use. This can be very misleading at the best of times, and in the case of an imported watch it is just simply totally wrong. The term "sponsor's mark" should always be used, irrespective of whether the item is British or imported. The sponsor was the person who took responsibility for an item when it was submitted for hallmarking, making a legal declaration of where it was made and bearing the penalty if an item was found to be substandard.

The mark was never intended to show who made an item; there was no requirement for a sponsor to be involved in any way in the manufacture of an item submitted for hallmarking and there has never been a requirement for the assay offices to know who actually made an item. To go to my page about British sponsor's marks click on this link: Sponsors Marks. There were two standards for gold. There were two standards for silver. The punch mark of a standing bear for the higher silver standard was replaced by a duck.

French names of parts such "cuivre", "ancre", rubis or "spiral" indicate a Swiss of French origin. If the case is silver or gold and has no hallmarks it must be Swiss; French gold and silver watch cases carry French hallmarks.

To go to the page about Swiss hallmarks and other Swiss marks click on this link: Swiss hallmarks. This system was introduced to provide traceability back to the case manufacturer for precious metal cases. It is always seen on gold and platinum watch cases after that date, but rarely on silver cases. To make the marks relatively inconspicuous a system of the symbols shown here and registration numbers was used.

When one of the symbols shown in the picture was stamped in a watch case, the XX or XXX was replaced by the registration number indicating the maker of the watch case. Before the Great War London was used by many Swiss companies and importers of Swiss watches as the route by which they could access the large market of the British Empire.

London was the company's export centre for every market in the world and by it had grown to such an extent that it occupied a large suite of offices and had a payroll of more than sixty employees.

The duties included motor vehicles, musical instruments and cinema film. It was initially intended to include hats, but it proved too difficult to formulate a precise definition of a hat. The McKenna duties had a major effect on the import of Swiss watches in gold cases. The high cost of gold meant that a large part of the cost of a gold watch was due to the cost of the metal in its case, which is also why so many watches have been stripped of their gold cases over the centuries.

In late , further restrictions on imports of precious metals were introduced by Royal Proclamation under Section forty-three of the Customs Consolidation Act, In November, importation of jewellery and all manufactures of gold and silver other than watches and watch cases was prohibited.

This was followed shortly afterwards by a revision in December, which prohibited the importation of gold, manufactured or unmanufactured, including gold coin and articles consisting partly of or containing gold; all manufactures of silver other than silver watches and silver watch cases, and jewellery of any description.

Note that the wording changed from allowing, as exceptions, the importation of gold and silver watches and watch cases, to only silver watches and silver watch cases. The importation of gold watches and gold watch cases was prohibited for the remaining duration of the war.

Because of the high rate of duty, and then the outright ban on the importation of gold watch cases, companies started to import bare Swiss movements and have them put into gold cases made by English companies such as the Dennison Watch Case Company , already established in Birmingham for the manufacture of gold, silver and gold plated rolled gold watch cases.

However, the opportunity presented by the duty, and then the outright ban on imports of gold cases, resulted in a number of other manufacturers not previously engaged in manufacturing watch cases to begin to manufacture specifically gold watch cases and bracelets.

Silver watches were not so affected by the McKenna duties, and their import was never banned, because the cost of a silver case made up a much smaller proportion of the total cost of the watch than a gold case, so it was not worthwhile having silver cases made in Britain for this reason, although Dennison continued to make cases for imported American movements.

Swiss watches continued to be imported in Swiss made silver cases for sale in Britain throughout the war and the period of the higher tax. Premises have been taken, machinery installed and workmen have been obtained. The products of the factory will be modelled on Swiss lines. The avoidance of the heavy import duties is, no doubt, the cause of the enterprise. To avoid paying the McKenna duties on watches that were not destined for sale in Britain, many companies started exporting directly from Switzerland to other countries.

Before the war this company was principally based in London with a small branch office in Bienne. As a result of the import tax, Rolex transferred to that office the management of exports to third countries, and then later moved the Rolex headquarters there.

The McKenna war duties, and the outright ban on importation of gold watches for the final two years of the war, started a trend for importing bare Swiss watch movements and putting them into British made gold cases that continued long after the Great War had ended. The McKenna duties were technically repealed in , but the charges on imported goods were continued by Treasury Order under the provisions of the Import Duties Act , which made it easier for changes to be made in the rates charged.

The continued levy of duty especially affected gold cases and gave a significant price advantage to British manufacturers of watch case that continued for many years. The case back in the picture here with Chester Assay Office Hallmarks for to illustrates this. The hallmarks in this case are Chester Assay Office hallmarks for a British made rather than imported item.

The town mark is the triangular shield with three wheat sheaves around an upright sword, the traditional town mark of the Chester Assay Office. After 1 June this was only used on watchcases actually made in Britain, it was not used on imported watch cases hallmarked at Chester, they got the town import mark of an acorn and oak leaves instead.

The patent number seen in the case, , for "Improvements in watch cases" was granted to Charles Henry Britton, Walter Britton and Herbert Britton of 35 Hockley Hill, Birmingham, on 11 August with a priority date of 15 September The object of the invention was to provide an improved construction of a two piece watch case with a neat and attractive appearance that could be cheaply manufactured. The case was made from a short piece of tube that formed the middle part of the case. This was pressed or rolled at both ends to provide the recess for the glass at the front and an undercut at the rear for the case back to snap on to.

The watch that the case back is from has an anonymous Swiss movement. They could be stamped in Switzerland by the case maker and the watch might never have been anywhere near to Germany. For more on this strange arrangement see German Marks.

If you have a set of hallmarks that are stubbornly resisting your attempts to identify them, consider that they might possibly not be genuine.