Featured Idle silver question

Suppose a piece of silver is made in the 18th C - a plain platter, simple rim, no armorials or other decoration - English silver fully hallmarked. Someone comes along 100 years later, late Victorian, and decides it needs sprucing up, so they take this silver platter and rework it with elaborate chased repoussé floral decoration and bright cut engraving. Looks stunning. Really fine work. Georgian hallmarks still intact. What does this do to the value?

I've heard that pieces have been reworked in such a fashion and that, by law, such pieces must be re-assayed and re-marked (the old hallmarks cancelled, I presume) or they cannot be sold as silver. Is this true?

And again: how much does a situation like this affect the value?

 

In the old days of Arthur Negus et al, value was severely compromised and those "Victorianized" pieces were sneered at by silver connoisseurs.

Today, however, in these great dumbing-down times, the value differential may not be as significant because there are far fewer people who still give a $hit about such things ..
A more common cry among silver folk today might be "how much does it weigh"

 

In theory, yes - maybe if the piece is re-submitted? -- In practice, hardly ever and probably only applies in jolly old England where stuffed shirts might still abound.

 

They do not have to be assayed again, as the silver content hasn't been changed. Assays are about purity.

This practice is known as clobbering. And whether it affects the value depends on how well it's done. Some prefer their older pieces un-got-at.

 

un-got-at..........I like that !!!

 

Clobbering is what I wanted to call it, but when I looked it up, the only references I found were to added color on ceramics.

But if the piece has been extensively reworked, how can you be sure the silver content hasn't been fiddled?

 

I'm confused - how would clobbering affect silver content? If repair or replacement were made (separate parts should be at least partially hallmarked from the start), and/or if marks were obscured or removed by alteration, then re-assay would be called for - but clobbering doesn't change the metal, just tarts it up...

~Cheryl

 

Not being involved in fraud, my imagination is limited. The chief objection to altering the metal by removing this bit and replacing it with another would be that it wasn't worth the effort, but in a time where labor was cheap, that might not be true.

It might be something as simple as adding new hallmarks to acknowledge that the rework was done, who did it, and when. If new hallmarks were required, the assay might be pro forma.

 

I have no clue what it does to the value of silver but, this exact same process happened to 17th century english furniture in victorian england and, it destroyed the value of the furniture.
From Jack Plane's Blog

"Q. How does ‘Vicobethan’ and ‘Vicobean’ furniture (tasteless, disproportionate, black-varnished factory-made Victorian tat produced in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Elizabethan and Jacobean styles) make an appearance on this blog?

A. When perfectly good Carolean, Queen Anne and Georgian furniture has been defaced by Victorian wastrels to keep abreast of trends.

In the Victorian era, middle- and upper classes prospered and many wealthy profligate gentlemen who, with nothing better to occupy their time, thought it amusing to roll up their starched white shirt sleeves, in imitation of the working class, and recklessly carve anything and everything around the home in the then fashionable Elizabethan and Jacobean revival taste."

A perfectly lovely little Charles II oak gateleg table, circa 1680


A very similar, but Vicobethan-ised seventeenth-century oak gateleg table


"Talk about carving up the inheritance!

Thankfully, little of this vandalised furniture now remains in Britain, the vast majority having found its way to more appreciative collectors in the former colonies."

 

So this is the current attitude towards such "updated" pieces?

Would they properly be considered Victorian, or are they lost in some furniture purgatory?

It seems to be the same situation, and from the same motivations.

The big difference is that silver is hallmarked. That's not a voluntary thing; it is required by legislation and the legislation is implemented through the assay office.

If the piece is properly marked, that's a government guarantee not only of the fineness of the metal, but also of when it was made and who took the responsibility.

An altered piece is no longer as the original maker intended, nor is it the piece that was acknowledged by the assay office. So what is it? Certainly the original maker had a hand in it, but he is no longer the sole author as continues to be attested by the hallmarks.

 

Hi,
I have a small booklet around here that shows what to remove from Victorian furniture to turn it into 1950s acceptable furniture.
greg

 

Just a fine point - the assay office does not guarantee when the item presented was made. Only when it was assayed.

 

LOL, Purgatory! Thing is, most early furniture collectors want pieces as close to original as possible, repairs, replaced parts and newer finishes are inevitable with 300 + year old pieces but to wack it up with a carving knife trying to make it into something it never was?
uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, nooooooooooooooooooooooooo, DEATH KNELL to it's former value. It's considered mostly with pity, a survivor that ran into a bad situation and got defaced. You can't undo something like that, it's not like it got painted which can be removed.
It COULD be very different with silver objects, i have no idea how those collectors view that sort of thing.

 

Folks do like to improve things, every era has the phenomenon.

 

Yep, is exactly the same situation, just different objects.
The Victorian age was weird, it was the first time in human history that regular people had leisure time and, a lot of odd stuff went on. It is very interesting from an academic point of view, many books/papers have been written on this subject.
Check out this thread that just posted
https://www.antiquers.com/threads/more-death-in-the-dining-room-painted-limoges-plates.45541/

 

Probably just my own denseness, but am having a hard time following - where is the fraud in clobbering? There was no intent to mislead, it was just refashioning a piece to suit tastes at the time, it still serves the same purpose, no additions or removals (other than the small bit removed from engraving), and assay simply determines the fineness anyway. If you added a base or feet or handles to your platter, then yes, those parts should actually be assayed and hallmarked, since they are separate articles. The piece belonged to the owner, if they wanted to have it decorated, then they did, and am quite sure the cost was less than the price of a new piece in the desired style. Now, if the modification somehow involved an old hallmarked bit ending up on new piece that looked old, that would be a serious issue...

Frankly, the assay offices don't care about the quality or history of the work, their responsibility is to make sure that the material is at least the fineness required to be sold as silver, gold, etc. The maker/sponsor mark is used to identify who owns the piece in order to get it back to them, as well as keeping records of charges, and any duty/taxes levied, when that was/is required. Though there might sometimes be a variance in cost for assay and hallmarking according to weight, the prices charged are by the piece, and small pieces don't even actually have to be hallmarked (at this time, for silver, under 7.78 grams).

And regarding their value - a true collector won't like a clobbered piece, but there are always going to be people who will pay more for an older 'fancy' piece than for a later piece that started out ornate (and truthfully, a pretty good number don't have any idea that the old piece has been altered)...

~Cheryl

 

Thought I remembered a fairly recent similar query on 925-1000, finally found it:

https://www.925-1000.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=53839


~Cheryl

 

I like those responses.

If people think that such changes are not of consequence, then that is to taken into consideration.

If an owner decides to have a piece modified, then that is their prerogative.

If a retailer in a later period wants to rework a piece from an earlier period and then market it as being from the earlier period, then I think that is questionable practice. If a retailer has comes into a piece that has been so altered, and knows it, then I think it is questionable practice not to disclose that information.

As for the status of hallmarks: they do tell something about the piece, but if the piece was altered subsequent to its original marketing, then the information available through the original hallmarking is no longer adequate. It can be misleading as the alterations may give the object an appearance inconsistent with styles of the earlier period.

 

Yes, I'd say that is correct however, as Wink noted above

That would apply to old furniture as well, just sayin.........

 

What British hallmarks tell you is that a piece is of guaranteed fineness, who had it assayed, what assay office did it, the date of the assay, and sometimes that the duty was paid, very useful information - but if that refashioned piece was taken in for a new assay, they would deface or erase the old marks and re-stamp it, and depending on the execution of the defacement/erasure, possibly lose the information pertaining to those old marks. So essentially, you now have a piece that did have evidence of age, still part of its history even if unfortunately clobbered (and at the very least, with unnecessary defacement), now bearing new hallmarks - suspect that might cause some confusion...

~Cheryl