Featured Basic Silver Terminology

https://www.jasper52.com/blog/defin...t=cta&utm_campaign=20200713_J52_Stories_Daily

 

Horrible
Inaccuracies

Silver is not noble and does corrode

 

Guess it depends on who's definition you use,the encyclopedia says otherwise. https://www.britannica.com/science/noble-metal

 

Regarding noble, they're talking about oxidation. Pure silver will tarnish from reactions with sulfur, or other metals mixed with silver in sterling may oxidize, but silver itself doesn't readily oxidize.

 

Nice info for our newbies, Bronwen, thank you.
Now we can tell them where to go.

 

I remember years ago, if a dealer asked if I anyone any plate, they meant solid silver, otherwise an item is silver plated. I never call anything silver plate, always silver plated.

 

Back in the old days (17th, 18th, 19th centuries) "Plate" referred to solid silver. as in "wrought plate". Early gold-filling/gold-plating systems referred to "base metal (brass, for example) between two gold plates".

Basically "plate" in this context referred to a SHEET of solid silver (or gold, as the case might've been).

Eventually, silver-plating (covering a base-metal with a 'sheet' of silver) usurped this original term, necessitating the distinction of "solid plate" and "plated". "Solid plate" eventually just became "solid silver" and "plated" became "silver-plate".

Or at least, that's my understanding of it.

 

I can only go by the terminology I first heard old dealers using 50 years ago. If they asked for "plate" they wanted solid silver. This was an expression I heard in my shop, before I retired, by an old dealer. He came into my shop and asked if I had any plate. To which I replied "sorry, I only have silver plated items" I suspect he was being a bit of a snob and trying to catch me out. As a result, I only use the term silver plated. I remember when "victoriana" was looked down on and sometimes sneered at, and only pre victorian items were classed as "antique" Unfortunately, in those days, we did not have much money so could never buy what we drooled over.

 

So do I. I first read the term silver plate for plated here. The things you learn on Antiquers.

 

I heard the word 'plate' used in the older sense last night in a production of Shakespeare's Richard II, when the king announces his intention to take all the goods of the late John of Gaunt, among the things on the list of what he plans to confiscate is all of Gaunt's 'plate'.

 

Correct sir mostly. "Silver plate" started disappearing in the 1840's when Dr John Wright of Birmingham (although he didn't invent the electroplating process which was 40 years earlier by Brugatelli) 'discovered' an electroplating system for gold and silver using potassium cyanide. Elkingtons bought the rights to his invention and the rest is history. In the professional antiques world if it is not silver/silver plate, it is silver plated or electro-plated. I Britain anyway.