Dear All
Users of your forums may like to know that the Incorporation of Goldsmiths of Edinburgh’s website has a hallmarking archive database. Based on information from our archives, and from decades of research by Henry Steuart Fothringham, this database brings together much of the known information on goldsmiths of Edinburgh from the twelfth century to the twentieth century. The majority of records date from the sixteenth century up to 1986, with lapsed customers of the office up to 2006. There are over six thousand biographies and numerous illustrations of makers’ marks. It will enable the user to match marks on pieces of silver or gold with the maker of that item, and it provides some brief biographical information on that maker. You can search by makers’ mark, by the name of the maker, and specifically for a keyword appearing in the records. The database has been recently expanded and now contains not only Edinburgh goldsmiths, but information on Glasgow goldsmiths from the surviving records of the Glasgow Assay Office. Work is currently in progress to include Scottish provincial goldsmiths. Photographic examples of their maker’s marks are being added all the time.
incorporationofgoldsmiths.co.uk/archive.html
Registration and use of the database is free.
Best wishes
Elspeth Morrison
(Archivist, Incorporation of Goldsmiths, Edinburgh, Scotland)