Dish is about 20 cm across, approximately. I couldnt find any info about this particular piece in my search at all. Is it possible that the “309” is referencing 309 stainless steel that is plated in silver as “47” is the atomic number for silver? I read that Marlboro made both plated and stainless sets but I couldn’t find anything about silver plated stainless. Also does anyone know what this dish was intended for? I thinking there are 2-3 missing pieces.
Thank you so much for your help :]
I believe you’re over-thinking this. The stamped numbers are almost certainly just item numbers and/or set numbers.
There would be no reason to use some obscure numeric code to indicate that the plating is silver. Marlboro Plate is a trade name used by Morton Parker, Ontario, for their silverplated items, produced from 1946-1988. AFAIK, they didn’t use any other metal as the plated surface.
Stainless steel is almost never silverplated because there’s no reason to do so. Stainless steel is decorative, and is even more resistant to tarnish than sterling silver. Silverplating it would be a little pointless.
It’s a small decorative serving dish on a pedestal, to be used for whatever the customer wants to put on it. The shape of the inside of the dish does suggest that it may have once had some sort of glass bowl. It was probably part of a set including, at a minimum, a flat tray of similar design.
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Thank you, thats kind of what I was thinking but it seemed like too much of a coincidence to not wonder.
Since there is no indication of what metal was used like the usual ep brass or ep copper is there any way to determine this?
If this was part of a set, the largest piece in the set might have had more extensive marking. Lacking that, there are several ways, most of them destructive, expensive, and/or difficult. You can gouge the bottom and see what color the base metal is. A chemical test or using x-ray fluorescence are more definitive, but require expertise and the right equipment.
Given that pieces like this aren’t antiques (yet), aren’t highly collected, sell only rarely, and sell for something in the low two figures, it’s not really worth doing the detective work. In short, no one really cares what the base metal is. The fact that it’s not a sterling silver object is usually the end of the inquiry.
BTW, most of the common base metals for electroplating - copper, brass, nickel silver - are all essentially alloys of copper. Pewter, an alloy of tin, was sometimes used as a base metal, but I gather it required multiple steps, starting with a layer of copper plating. A bit too involved. It also produced objects that were somewhat too soft to stand up to steady use.