Hi, my late mother-in-law had this piece and I’m a bit confused as to whether it’s plate or not. I think it is plate from Elkington & Co about 1840. I’ve no idea what the sign is on the right.
Many thanks for your help.
Best regards
Belinda
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Yes this is early Elkington Plate. George bought the patent for electro-plate off someone else and sold licences to his competitors
The mark on the right seems scrambled or double stamped but should say “& Co”
X in diamond is a date letter for 1862 which was the year of the Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace where the Elkingtons were prominent exhibitors.
This piece,or another just like it, may have been exhibited there.
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.fl4b4r&seq=7
CRWW
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Many thanks for your help
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And to clear up one bit of confusion that has stopped me in the past, the punches on your piece are EM & Co, so this is from the very end of the partnership of Elkington and Mason - hence, the M. They went their separate ways at about this time.
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I wasn’t sure the format of the question would allow me to meander into the financial backing of the brother’s Birmingham company but since you have opened the door it is worth noting financial backing from Josiah Mason in 1842 meant the company was called Elkington, Mason & Co from 1842 until the year before the Great Exhibition and had financed development of the electrotyping as a new method of production for silver-plated items which Elkington & Co exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851.
Alistair Grant’s work "Elkington & Co. and the Art of Electro-Metallurgy, noted “…while the manufacturing and joint-stock company in Birmingham was restyled Elkington, Mason, & Co., the subsidiary retail partnership in London remained Elkington & Co. and continued using the maker mark E & Co.”
Sir Josiah Mason ,as he became, was a dip pen manufacturer and enormously successful. It was he that put up the cash for the Electroplate patent purchase.
CRWW
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Gosh many thanks for this detail.
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