My research shows that they are German. Trying to determine if the bowls are brass or 800 silver. The last photo shows a worn bowl with silver color. Thank you for any help
The greenish colour around the collar on one of the spoons and in the bowl of another indicates brass. If they have a thin gold coating on the bowls it is not irrefutably evident from the photo. If it is .800 silver, as it apparently is for the stuffed handles, it would have said so as it does for the handles. Sellers aren’t shy about declaring silver. A quality set of these sort of spoons would have vermeil bowls; gold applied by electrolysis over silver.
If they are in you possession clean them up and much will be revealed. One of the tasks will be to reseat the bowls in the handles. If they are pitch you can do this with heat and pressure if they are plaster it is a removal, re-drill and set back in epoxy effort, easy to mess up.
If they are not in your possession, then you are well-positioned regarding the set and should do your best to maintain that respectful distance.
Hi, and thank you for your thoughtful reply. I appreciate you taking time to answer. I do have these, I purchased them for not very much several years ago. I will clean them and check them out. All of my online research, from articles etc. has told me that the bowls would be 800 silver. But, it does seem that they could be brass. It will be a few day or a week before I can get that done, and I will update what i find. All the best, Gary
These are probably four of a set of six 1950’s Italian spoons. The absence of maker’s marks or even city marks is a bit of a red flag for me. I am not saying post-war Italy, with an economy devastated by wartime infrastructure damage and retaliatory tariffs imposed at the Potsdam Conference, was less protective of its reputation than today but times were tough and if a bi-metal spoon for export showed an .800 mark on the stuffed handle cladding and was silent on the part of the spoon with the heaviest metal content and some folks may have misread that as solid silver with a golden coating thrown in for good measure , hey, that’s the 'fifties in a messed up Europe.
I think the best thing to come out of that country in this period was Sofia Costanza Brigida Villani Scicolone aka Sophia Loren. The worst was the 320,000 Allied troops killed or wounded in a campaign only Churchill and Brooks wanted. It was the right choice, the alternative preferred by Eisenhower and later Truman was a 1943 invasion of France which would have seen the Allies defeated and the war dragged through until 1949 or longer.
I regard minor scams by industrial silversmiths trying to earn hard currency to pay skilled labour as a small price which I would rather I didn’t pay in addition to those losses.
https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/4329007667/cutlery-set-1950s-800-silver-set-of-6?ref=share_v4_lx