This dish was handed down to my father in New England in the 1950s.
Is that a lion passant on the left? I’ve been looking at hallmarks for hours and I can’t make out what that is on the right.
I’d love to know anything at all you might recognize- time period? American/British? Why are there only two stamps?
I haven’t done an acid test but it seems to be sterling and I can see evidence that someone did the piercing around the edges by hand (I’m a jeweler and I know hand-saw marks when I see them, but I have no experience in tableware)
Is it common to scratch a number over the hallmarks like this? Could it be cataloguing or something?
Should I ever expect to see hand-tooling marks like that on a piece that’s silver plated? Or is that not a useful detail?
I don’t recognise those marks either but I can say that they are definitely not British silver hallmarks and I don’t think that they are British electroplate marks. The scratched W180 is could be either an inventory number put there by a previous owner, or possibly a pawnbroker’s mark.
Note that an acid test, to be conclusive, would require you to cut into the piece in order to rule out a surface electroplate layer.
