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The assay office marks for London, Birmingham, Sheffield, and Edinburgh. The third from the left shows the rose for Sheffield. The Assay Office was then founded and hallmarked its first piece on 20 September 1773. Lots were drawn to determine which marks the offices would use. Sheffield won and chose the crown, while Birmingham took the anchor ...
The hallmark of the Birmingham Assay Office is the Anchor, and that of the Sheffield Assay Office was the Crown. A story about the origins of this hallmark goes that meetings prior to the inauguration of both Birmingham and Sheffield assay offices in 1773 were held at a public house called the Crown and Anchor Tavern on the Strand, London .
Assay offices are institutions set up to assay (test the purity of) precious metals. This is often done to protect consumers from buying fake items. Upon successful completion of an assay (i.e. if the metallurgical content is found be equal or better than that claimed by the maker and it otherwise conforms to the prevailing law) the assay offices typically stamp a hallmark on the item to ...
Hallmarks include information not only about the precious metal and fineness, but the country from which the item was tested and marked. Some hallmarks can reveal even more information, e.g. the assay office, size of the object marked, year the item was hallmarked - referred to as a date mark (also known as date letter). [2]
A silver object that is to be sold commercially is, in most countries, stamped with one or more silver hallmarks indicating the purity of the silver, the mark of the manufacturer or silversmith, and other (optional) markings to indicate the date of manufacture and additional information about the piece.
Nathaniel Mills the Elder (1746–1843) was a partner in Mills & Langston, Northwood Jewellers when he registered his first mark in 1803. [1] In 1825, he registered his well-known now punch mark 'N.M' within a rectangle at the Birmingham Assay Office and concentrated on working with silver on his own. [2]
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