Help with beaver hallmark

I am in Perth Australia and was wondering where this piece was made, and if possible, how old it is. As far as I can tell, it is silverplate and made by either

John Sherwood and Son
Maxfield and Sons/W Mammat and Sons
Fairfax and Roberts.

I know nothing about silver,-this is an inherited piece. I think it is really pretty so plan to keep it. Thankyou very much for your help.





Margaret

Fairfax & Roberts’s beaver looks like the best match (and ties in nicely with your Australian location) but I would have expected any of the marks of the companies you suggest to have had initials and not just the beaver image. I cannot therefore suggest a positive identification although I think that you are probably correct to assume that it is electroplate.

Dating electroplate is near impossible and hinges on knowing a company’s working dates so without a positive identification nothing can be said about a possible date.

Phil

Thanks very much for your help Phil. There is some other family silver that I am looking at and it is great to know that if I get stuck I can ask here.

Kind regards
Margaret

Hi Margaret, I stumbled across your post while researching my own family silver collection. My great-great-grandfather John Daniel Alexander was a silversmith in Sydney, who worked for Maxfield and Sons in Sheffield before he migrated to Australia. Maxfield and Sons was formed through a merger of a couple of silversmith companies in Sheffield - one of which was William Mammatt and Sons. I suspect it was no coincidence that my great-great-grandfather John Daniel married Thirza Mammatt in Sheffield! JD Alexander always used the beaver as his hallmark - including on later items that are marked with the beaver and ‘JD Alexander, Sydney’. Who knows - we could be distantly related! Carolyn