posted 01-29-2004 11:34 PM            

Glasgow Scotland, Adam Graham, 1763-1770

Thanks for these puzzles. Very enjoyable.

posted 01-30-2004 12:33 PM            

As you probably know, since you got this one so quickly, Scottish provincial silver typically has two maker's marks, with a "town mark" of some sort (a pseudohallmark) between (although, just to add to the difficulty, there are sometimes additonal marks, or else none but the maker's mark, making confusion with American silver common). In this case, the center mark is (was) a real hallmark -- for some reason, through much of the 18th Century, date marks were omitted by the Glassgow assay office (a letter, not a date mark, was sometimes used), even though they were used before and after, thus making silver so marked look provincial.

Once this was recognized as probably Scottish, it could have been found by looking up the AG maker's mark in the Scottish section of Jackson III.

Below is a photo of a (later and smaller) Glasgow "tree, fish, and bell" town mark:

For those unfamiliar with the town symbol of Glasgow, there is a rather flat-topped tree with a bell hanging from the right side; there is a fish placed across the trunk (in some earlier examples the fish may lie below the tree). In addition, there is a bird perched atop the tree.

posted 09-30-2004 03:40 PM            

Here are two strikes of the mark of Alexander Gairdner of Edinburgh, Scotland, probably from the same punch, which look remarkably like the mark of Adam Graham of Glasgow:

The upper one is from a later strike of the punch, which is chipped in the same manner as the Graham punch (see the first entry in this thread); it is on an incompletely marked small teaspoon and bears the sovereign's head in use in Edinburgh after 1786, as well as an indistinct thistle standard mark. The lower one, unchipped, is from a fully marked 1784 Edinburgh spoon bearing the incuse sovereign's head used in 1784 and 1785, and therefore is earlier (Glasgow would not have had the sovereign's head mark until 1819, when the "official" assay office was established; that mark differs somewhat in form from those used in Edinburgh). Were it not for the difference in size (3X2 mm for Gairdner's and 5X3 for Graham's) and the different city marks, there could be a real problem in differentiating the two, in light of the similarity in letter form. A possible explanation is that both punches could have been supplied by the same die maker.

posted 11-26-2004 01:28 PM            

This is the BELL that never rang.
This is FISH that never swam,
This is the TREE that never grew,
This is the BIRD that never flew.

(no mention of the ring!)