Please can someone decipher these initials for me? The first is obviously an H but then ‘I’m stuck! Also help with the hallmark please. Many thanks.
Thanks - I was reading it upside down!
I inherited it from my mother and those initials don’t fit any family name I can think of. More research needed!
Experts on the subject will be here soon - they will definitely help you.
And it’s not technically a “hallmark,” since it’s not sterling silver. It’s electroplate, the makers of which were free to mark however they chose to, with few restrictions.
More likely FGH, but it could also be JGH or TGH. Florid engravings are often tough to decipher!
I also have the same problems when I see these swirls… ![]()
For me it’s JGH (or IGH as I and J can be interchangeable). Just possibly TGH but if so the top of the T should extend a bit farther to the right.
Well if your last name is Hiller, as in your non de plume, then the last initial fits. The Hillers in Canada are hockey players and agricultural machine makers — good enough at it they would have decked their tables with sterling not electroplated silver so perhaps not.
But, if you will pardon my saying so, asking us to fit the initials on the utensil to your family and not disclosing who your family is might be a bridge too far for even those prepared to indulge you in sophistry-tinged deductive logic.
CRWW
I didn’t expect anyone to link the initials to my family! I just couldn’t read them - but if they are JGH, or anything ending with an H 'it just doesn’t fit with my mother’s maiden or married name - and my surname isn’t Hiller!
Given you inherited, unless your mom was entertaining herself with someone else’s silver, the connection seems fairly straight forward.
But no, you’re right I didn’t understand you were merely looking for a lesson in how to read italics.
Some of the italized letters, like W or M, and I, J, F and T do get a little confusing and if there is a family connection can be sorted by direct reference to the family tree.
Back in the day when students were taught cursive writing and equipped with copy books and steel-nibbed dip pens to complete the work, we all were expected to know “our letters”.
It was virtually impossible to complete the work if you were left-handed and writing from the left side of the page. So I had to learn to write right-handed very young. Being ambidextrous paid no dividend until I broke my left wrist years later when thrown off a horse I was schooling and had to write a torts (legal wrongs not French cakes) exam the next week.
After completing the exam without using my usual sinister (I use the word literally not in the Marvel Comics manner) scrawl, I was called in by the prof’ who suggested I had employed a third person to write the exam.
I told him he was sort of right. I was using my right hand and my left brain neither of which usually got a work out in LAW I, but explained I was still more or less in charge of all four parts of my anatomy.
Your desire to remain anonymous while 'sussing out family electroplate is intriguing. Are you very famous or even better notorious?
CRWW





