posted 08-31-2024 10:57 PM            

This spoon has the Mark d from Catherine Hollan’s book on Virginia Silversmiths and is attributed to Asa Blanchard while he was in Lexington, Kentucky. The mark “AB” in plain rectangle was also used by Blanchard with an eagle used by John McMullin as McMullin’s manufacturer's mark. This spoon does not have an eagle, but it does have the impression of a woman in a long flowing dress.

I have never seen a manufacturer’s mark that uses a person - they all seem to be similar to UK hallmarks, stars, eagles and the like. I do not know whether this was meant to be an identifier or some other representation. Any ideas? It could be that during Blanchard’s early days in Kentucky he purchased silver from others for resale.

posted 09-01-2024 05:58 PM            

[This message has been edited by wev (edited 09-01-2024).]

posted 09-10-2024 02:45 PM            

A little follow-up on this thread. I sent a picture of the mark to John McGrew, author of the book on Manufacturers' marks for possible identification of the woman in a long dress. He had seen this mark and it was one of about 20 other marks that he learned about after he published his book. He noted that Catherine Hollan did publish this mark of the woman in her book on Virginia silversmiths. The above photo is a copy of her interesting comments about Ebenezer Thomas of Petersburg, Virginia,

I also looked in the Hollan book to see if the WWG mark that WEV had was from a Virginia silversmith.
Below are the results.

William Waddill Geddy lived in Petersburg as did Thomas. Blanchard lived 100 miles north of Petersburg in Dumfries, VA. I will leave it to others to decide who made what, but it does look like the paths of all these silversmiths crossed successfully. I brought the Blanchard spoons from a dealer that lives in Virginia; so this may be the first time they have taken a trip outside of that state.