When is plate not a plate – when it is made of solid silver?Confused, then read on and all will be revealed.
There is a lot of confusion with terminology regarding silver plated pieces. Antique dealers add to the confusion by incorrectly using the term Sheffield Plate to mean Fused Plate when the item is really silverplate/electroplate. So what is the difference, why is there confusion?
The two common forms of plated silver are Sheffield Plate or fused plate and silverplate or electroplate.
For reasons we do not quite understand, the early English word plate was used to describe “solid” silver and not used to describe a dish from which to eat from of at the table. So, when one hears or sees the phrase English plate, it refers to good old solid silver that was made in Britain by specialist goldsmiths and then assayed or hallmarked in the appropriate manner. These items were were made from 92.5% pure silver and 7.5% a copper or copper alloy. They were allowed to be called sterling although the technical jargon was silver plate. This standard has been in existence for over 600 years and there were no alternatives to this mixture to make it either more desirable or less expensive with the exception of Britannia silver that contains a minimum of 95.84% silver making it a more valuable alloy and thus more expensive than sterling silver.
British sterling silver fineness mark
British solid sterling silver hallmarks
British solid Britannia silver fineness mark
British solid Britannia silver hallmarks
When one looks to decipher the early hallmarks on old silver, books usually refer to tables where the lists are categorized by the authorized large cities that had assay offices. Therefore, silver from London would be called “marks on London plate,” whereas others could be marks on Exeter, Chester or Newcastle plate, etc. Even solid silver made in the area of Sheffield would be labeled and discussed as Sheffield Plate.This became a problem in the 1700s however, when Thomas Boulsover “discovered” a process to solder together sheets of silver and copper and then roll them out and fabricate them into articles of tableware and flatware. Since Thomas was in Sheffield, Britain, the process became known as the “new Sheffield plate”. Since Sheffield was an assay town, it already had its own lively trade and strict marking system for sterling silver or plate. These new items could not be marked sterling, but indeed looked and acted like the real thing. For the next 75 to100 years, Sheffield silver became the name for “fused silver and copper,” a hand process but without the high cost of the raw material.
Examine the edges and the seam marks – both indicators of old Sheffield plate
The process became outdated and obsolete with the discovery of electroplating in Britain around 1843. Electroplating was much faster and even less costly. The articles could be crafted in the original material (copper or nickel), and then dipped in a silver solution bath to coat it with the silver surface. A weak electrical charge did the trick and provided a finish that did not have seams, unsightly edges displaying the metal sandwich, or excess raw material needed to finish the items. Since the Industrial Revolution was in full swing, the creation of pieces was easy, particularly in making quantities of the same item from the same moulds and not requiring craftsman to hand fuse the pieces.
Most people called this new product electroplating or Victorian plated ware, something they understood to be completely different than Sheffield silver plate. Since America was becoming both the manufacturing and consumption centre of the world, the term Sheffield silver or Sheffield silver plate, was losing appeal and use. It was not until the 1900’s that the terms became confused with electroplating because the marketing departments of the companies began using the term “Sheffield silver” to insinuate a higher quality product, even though it was not.
A typical mark for electroplate or silverplate and not Sheffield silver
The main points to remember are that anything marked Sheffield silver probably is not either silver or made in Sheffield. True silver from the city of Sheffield is sterling and so marked with the appropriate hallmarks, including the lion passant-the silver indicator for hundreds of years. In ancient days pre-1900s, this was called Sheffield plate or plate from Sheffield. Authentic Sheffield silver is the name for the hand fused silver sandwich, crafted around the city or area of Sheffield, Britain, from 1750-1840. It is usually not marked and often bears the visible layers of different coloured metal on edges.
Silverplate is the common term for electroplating and can be done on copper, nickel silver (sometimes called “German silver”), white metal, or other base element. It is a machine process and contains minimal silver (not enough to scrape off or melt away). Even if a piece is marked “Quadruple” plate, it has only 0.0012 inch thickness of silver applied to the base metal, not sufficiently different from “Standard plate”-which has a thickness of only 0.0003 inches.
Note: the word silverplate is not usually found in the dictionary. It usually pops up during a computer spell check; so even the professional word people do not get it, but now you do!
You Decide
So now you know and you can thus take your pick but be careful of the terms.
Sterling silver is 92.5% pure and was often called plate in 1700s and 1800s Britain, hence the ambiguous two word phrase “silver plate.”
Sheffield silver is a term that describes the hand fusion of silver and copper and usually dates from 1750 to 1840 and is considered antique.
Silverplate is the term used for items that undergo an electrical process that coats a thin layer of silver to a base metal. Introduced around 1850, it has remained the same process to today. Items made in 1870 are made the same way today, often making it difficult for one to determine exact age.
At Rarity4u we follow tradition where appropriate, but move away from tradition for clarity and to avoid misunderstanding, so we use the following terminology:
Solid Silver, Sterling Silver and Britannia Silver
This denotes the piece is made from solid silver material at the stated fineness and not from a silver plated material.
Fused Plate or Old Sheffield Fused Plate
This denotes a piece that has been made from material using the Thomas Boulsover method of fusing silver to copper. It is a cheaper substitute for solid sterling silver, produced by fusing sheets of silver to the top and bottom of a sheet of copper or base metal. This 'silver sandwich' was then worked into finished pieces. At first silver was only put on one side but later it was on put on both top and bottom.
Close Plate
This denotes a piece that has been made by fusing silver onto a base metal usually steel for those items where strength is required.
Silverplate
This denotes a piece that is made from base metal and coated with silver using the electroplated method irrespective of the place of manufacture.
Modern electroplating was invented by Italian chemist Luigi V. Brugnatelli in 1805. Brugnatelli used his colleague Alessandro Volta's invention of five years earlier, the voltaic pile, to facilitate the first electrodeposition. Unfortunately, Brugnatelli's inventions were repressed by the French Academy of Sciences and did not become used in general industry for the following thirty years.
Silverplate or electroplate is formed when a thin layer of pure or sterling silver is deposited electrolytically on the surface of a base metal. By 1839, scientists in Britain and Russia had independently devised metal deposition processes similar to Brugnatelli's for the copper electroplating of printing press plates.
Soon after, John Wright of Birmingham, UK, discovered that potassium cyanide was a suitable electrolyte for gold and silver electroplating. Wright's associates, George Elkington and Henry Elkington were awarded the first patents for electroplating in 1840. These two then founded the electroplating industry in Birmingham, UK from where it spread around the world.
Common base metals include copper, brass, nickel silver - an alloy of copper, zinc and nickel - and Britannia metal-a tin alloy with 5-10% antimony.
Electroplated materials are often stamped EPNS for electroplated nickel silver, or EPBM for electroplated Britannia metal.
Sheffield plate by the fusion process was not made in America, but factories in America did turn out quantities of electroplated silver. In fact, it was so popular that one British firm with several variations of its name, but all including Dixon, sold quantities of electroplated silver, issued catalogues, and even had a New York showroom.
Today there is a great deal of American plated silver which has been treasured for years. Many families had plated silver as well as fine sterling. Some of it was inherited; whilst some was prized for sentimental reasons.
On plated silver the terms 'triple' and 'quadruple' indicate the number of coatings received by the base metal in the electroplating process. Naturally the more metal used in the plating the longer the piece should last. Polishing and wear have taken their toll of much of this plated ware and whether pieces are worth re-plating depends on their usefulness and your pleasure in them. If you like them well enough to spend money on them, then by all means have the work done, but remember the worth of a piece is its market value only, eg the metal that is in it, the base metal under the plating being worth very little.
E.P.N.S. (Electroplated Nickel Silver) and EPBM (Electroplated Britannia Metal) are the most common names attributed to silver plate items. But many other names are used for silverplate:
EPWM, Electroplate on White Metal
EPC, Electroplate On Copper
EPCA, Electro Plated Copper Alloy
EPGS - Electro Plated German Silver
EPMS - Electro Plated Magnetic Silver,
African Silver
Albion Silver
Alpha Plate
Ambassador Plate
Angle Plate
Argentium,
Argentine Plate
Argentum
Ascetic
Austrian Silver
Brazilian Silver
Britanoid
Cardinal Plate
Electrum
Embassy Plate
Encore
Exquisite
Insignia Plate
Kingsley Plate
New Silver
Nevada Silver
Norwegian Silver
Pelican Silver
Potosi Silver
Royal County Plate
Silva Seal
Silverite
Sonora Silver
Spur Silver
Stainless Nickel
Stainless Nickel Silver
Unity Plate
Venetian Silver
Welbeck Plate
and many more.