Hello! I have been using this spoon for coffee for a long time. I recently had a relative pass and we have been going through their things and finding various silver items. This made me interested in my little spoon, to see where it came from and if it is silver. The mark looks like the buildings you might see in Russia with a 59. Plus there is a COHF, I think. Does anyone have any idea if it is Russian? Or if it is silver. It is fairly light and delicate.
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The “three towers” and “59” tell us that this is Danish silver, from 1959. The maker is Carl M. Cohr. The silver would have a minimum fineness of .826 (compared to the .925 fineness of “sterling”).
ETA: Carl Cohr died in 1925, but his son Einar continued the family business for many decades afterwards.
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Wow, so they only used 3 towers, with no indication of the quality of the silver? That’s crazy!
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The hallmark indicated only the minimum fineness. If a silversmith used a higher grade of silver, I believe he could append a numeric fineness mark, like “925.”
All academic now, as the cited article explains - the marking system used here was abandoned many decades ago. Now, you’re more likely to see something marked simply as “STERLING.”
I understand, but I am surprised that there is no other indicator and the number under the 3 towers varies. Someone who is not familiar with this system may think it is not silver. I confess that I did not know and I have already made good acquisitions with information that I learned here, Loth is one of them and now the 3 Danish towers. Thank you