I’m a researcher at small rural museum in New Zealand.
I am researching the hall marks on a silver cloche from the family of one of the areas founders, or point me in the right direction
The piece is reported to have come from Ireland,
There are numbers and letters stamped on the inside too.
I would be grateful for any suggestions from people much more knowledgeable than me.
These are not hallmarks. The JD&S stands for James Dixon and Sons. The EP stands for electroplate.
So this is neither Irish nor silver. It’s mass-produced electroplate from Sheffield.
The numbers are simply a catalogue number of some sort.
Dixon and Sons were active from the mid 19th century to 1976. Dating the piece more accurately will probably not be possible - absent any other evidence, it could have been produced at almost any time during the life of the company.
(Edited - upon a better look, it’s definitely EP, not EB.)
Hi Jeanette:
Are you by any chance connected to the Nelson Museum at the northern end of the South Island?
https://www.museumgala.co.nz/.
I ask because I am invited to a dinner there, a fund raiser for a very worthy cause by former neighbours of ours in Northamptonshire UK who moved there to farm.
James Dixon & Sons work while made in Sheffield was exported globally and directly to both Ireland and New Zealand. The company obtained a licence to manufacture electroplate from the Elkington Bros of Birmingham and began manufacture and sales in 1848. The trademark "Trumpet and Banner " was approved in 1879 and used thereafter to distinguish the company from James Deakin & Sons who used a desk bell, sometimes wrongly referred to as a lamp.
So while it is true, absent third party authentication of date, things are not entirely certain we do know electroplating started in 1848 and by 1879 the trumpet was a nearly universally used trademark by the company whose absence on this item marked EP points to a likely manufacture window of some 31 years.
CRWW
Thanks for the added info. I wondered how universal the use of the trumpet mark was, and if its absence could be a guide to the date.
WOW ------------------
That, I think was rather the point. The trumpet or bugle wasn’t approved as a trade mark therefore not in use until 1879. Therefore, while its absence is not, in and of itself definitive, it is certainly indicative of date.
We are rather more likely to be able to narrow it down further once we are told what the item is and can compare it to catalogued items issued by the firm.
But you are quite right it is always harder to prove a negative.
“My client wasn’t there.”
“If he was there, which he denies, then he didn’t do it.”
“If he did it, which he does not admit, then there was just cause.”
“Given there was just cause, despite the fact that he wasn’t there and he didn’t do it, he pleads mitigating circumstances.”
This is verbatim from some civil pleadings where balance of probability not reasonable doubt is is the burden of proof.
But I thank you for your gracious acknowledgement on behalf of Jeanette to whom the data was directed. Did you manage to clarify with her, when you were getting your instructions to respond, if I was correct in my geographic assumption?
CRWW
Takes me back to moot court days in law school. How to present an entire series of mutually exclusive arguments. Fun for the whole family.
I have no idea where Jeanette is, beyond what she’s kindly told us. And if I’ve been receiving instructions, they must be very, very subliminal. 
She did mention it being a cloche. That might make dating tricky, since they were probably produced in the same form for decades. But perhaps they made a version with some Victorian embellishment. A photo could be helpful.
ETA: BTW, I always use a cloche. I like to be surprised at what I’ve made myself for dinner. 
I’m not connected to the Nelson Museum, I’m in the Western Bay of Plenty.
Your dinner sounds great,
Thanks Jeff. That confirms my suspicions about the piece. Its weight made me think that it was plated rather 5than solid, and the engraved unicorn on the image made me think it unlikely to be Irish.
Your comments have helped my research immensly.
Thanks again
Now if it had an engraving of a leprechaun…
Wouldn’t that be just too coincidental lol
We’d still like to see some photos of the entire cloche, especially of the unicorn engraving. There’s a suspicion abroad in the land that they might enable us to provide some additional useful information!
Curious I looked thing up and found the region is noted for “special settlements” led by George Vesey Stewart, who brought Ulster Irish families to Katikati in 1875 (aboard the Carisbrook Castle) and 1878 (aboard the Lady Jocelyn).
I see you have an on line list of named settlers presumably you can cross reference those names with a unicorn in their heraldic badge.
But Ulster settlers were often Scotsmen that James I moved to Ireland.
So unicorns as symbols of Scotland crop up all over the place.
The Steurt message, as I am sure you know, began: "To all Protestant friends and brothers - I present to you the rare opportunity of being amongst the 40 families who will become a part of a settlement of Ulstermen in the country of New Zealand.
“Each member of this party will receive a free grant of 40 acres, with additional land for each child to a maximum of 300 acres.”
The author of the poster and the man behind this extraordinary venture was a County Tyrone farmer and flax mill owner, George Vesey Steuart.
His ambition was “to transplant a little corner of Ulster upon a Garden of Eden in New Zealand, free from rents and taxes, with magnificent soil and the finest climate under the British flag, and in a country devoted and loyal to its noble Fatherland”.
But, if you will pardon a warning, silver sellers both plate and sterling used to emboss or scribe faux badges on the instruction of clients who wanted to emulate having some sort of heraldic entitlement without actually registering the badge with the Heralds.
CRWW
You can see an image of it here
https://ehive.com/collections/4456/objects/2362881/silver-cloche
Tanks for your reply and great sleuthing. the cloche belonged to Doris Stewart, granddaughter of George Vesey Stewart.
https://ehive.com/collections/4456/objects/2362881/silver-cloche
Thank you for your note and picture containing the Heraldic Badge of “a unicorn’s head couped or, armed and crined arg. Foru-ard. 49. 7”. first awarded to George Vesey Stewart’s grandfather: The Right Hon. Sir John Stewart DL 1st Baronet of Athenry Tyrone (21 6 1803)Born in 1757 Deceased June 22, 1825, aged 68 years M.P. co. Tyrone (1802-6 and between 1812-25) the Attorney-General of Ireland. (Fairbairn Heraldry and Private papers.
Do you by any chance know what happened to the Scottish Crofters he assembled for later settlement in New Zealand who actually came to and settled in British Columbia?
I think they may have settled in what is now the Fraser Valley?
CRWW
Your plea for further and better particulars bore fruit!! While the image we have of the heraldic badge is rather taken on the slant it’s clearly the Stewart Unicorn. “Crined” means bearing human hair coloured.
George sort of pushed his luck with the New Zealanders as they turned down his last batch of Scottish crofters he wanted settling. I think they ended up in the Fraser Valley. just outside of Vancouver.
CRWW
This rather elaborate iteration of the “crined” Unicorn is “couped”.
It is part of a short piece concerning the first two Stewart Baronets, the property they acquired and how they lost it. (see below).
The not always orthodox behaviour of George Vasey Stewart may be informed by the financial reversals by those in the immediate family tree.
Here is his memorial:
None of this answers the more germane question posed, the age of the meat cloche:
I think the answer remains somewhere between 1840 when plate replaced earlier alternates and likely before 1879. This dovetails with George’s founding of the two settlements on the Bay of Plenty in 1875 and 1878.
CRWW
