Help id stamp

Hi
Looking for help with the stamp in pic. Best pic i could get sorry.

 

It's silverplate, and the plating is flaking off. Maker is L.B. Smith - Boston - it's marked there on the left. "SHEFFIELD" is for "sheffield plate" I think - a method of doing the silverplating. The crown, cross, and other mark(shield?) are just the maker's marks.

 

Lawrence B Smith mark examples here:

http://www.sterlingflatwarefashions.com/SPMfgs/SPS2.html

 

Sheffield reproduction by Smith. No way is this Sheffield Plate.

 

I don't really know much about sheffield plate - but doing a little googling - looks like actual sheffield is much thicker...and over copper? Looks like this plating is barely there, and over white metal.

 

True "Sheffield Plate" long pre-dates electroplating and was a mechanical process of fusing rolled silver over a base of copper - "discovered" by accident by Thomas Bolsover about 1742. I have a book about SP printed in 1903 by Bertie Wyllie that begins with a rant about the rage for "Old Sheffield Plate" in England and the US which had caused many manufacturers on both sides of the pond to use this term without using the actual process and thereby hoodwinking the public.

 

If you want to learn more about the subject, click on the "Introductory Text" at the top of this page listing makers of "true" Sheffield Plate.

http://www.925-1000.com/silverplate__OSP1.html

 

It does not say "SHEFFIELD" exactly. Looks like a miss-mosh to me.