American Colonial? Spoon mark

Discussion in 'Silver' started by J Dagger, Jul 13, 2019.

  1. J Dagger

    J Dagger Well-Known Member

    Went to an estate sale today and there were two spoons with a a tag that said "colonial" on them. They were very expensive. Back is marked NA in a rectangle if I recall correctly. I can't find this mark anywhere. Is anyone familiar with this mark? Any ideas at all? I'm very interested to find out more about them. I'm going back tomorrow to get a piece of artwork hopefully and would love to go knowing a little more about these. My phone died right before I could get a photo. Grrr
     
  2. Bakersgma

    Bakersgma Well-Known Member

    To take the most direct approach to the seller's intent in marking the tag "colonial" I looked for American silversmiths who used the letters NA as their mark - and sure enough I found 2 references only - both for Nathanial Austin whose working info cites Charlestown and Boston Mass. locations that span from about 1760 to 1810's.

    You can see an example of the mark on this page - https://www.sterlingflatwarefashions.com/Silversmiths/SSA4.html

    Does this look like the NA you saw?

    His work was with "coin silver."
     
  3. J Dagger

    J Dagger Well-Known Member

    Ooh!! Thanks I think there’s a good chance thats the one! Sale is outside of Boston so geographically it makes sense too. If it’s not Nathaniel Austin I’ll be pretty surprised. I think the best I’ll be able to get them for is half price and they were asking $225 I think. I’ll have to figure out if that’s a decent price for this particular silversmith. Seems like it’s not a super bad price but not sure there would be much if any meat on the bone if I decided to sell them at any point. I collect some coin silver spoons from the 19th century but haven’t delved into the 18th yet. These would be some neat ones to own.

    How did find this mark? I looked on a couple of the major sites and didn’t see it. Just wondering how I can find others in the future outside of basic google searches and using some of the better known mark sites.

     
    judy likes this.
  4. Bakersgma

    Bakersgma Well-Known Member

    Coin silver marks are not well represented on sites like 925-1000 and silvercollection.it, but the owners of sterlingflatwarefashions.com have done a great job of adding mark examples from the coin silversmiths to the more mainstream manufacturers. If you go to the main search page for silversmiths, you will see an option to search by Letters and Initials. That's where I went to find the initials NA you had said were on the 2 spoons.

    https://www.sterlingflatwarefashions.com/Silversmiths/SilvSm1.html
     
    judy likes this.
  5. J Dagger

    J Dagger Well-Known Member

    So weird I replied a couple times on another device but it’s not showing up here. Anyway I went back and the spoons had already sold for $150 by the time I got there. Oh well! I did some more digging that day I made the original post. It turns out they were made by Nathan Adams of Wiscasset, ME. Once I saw the serrated edge on his mark I knew it was the right one. http://www.cyberattic.com/stores/ge...on-marked-NA-in-serrated-rectangle-circa-1805

    Thanks for your help.
     
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