Rose (Sheffield hallmark)

How to read it

The UK’s Hallmarking Act gives a rose as the mark of the Sheffield assay office. Older Sheffield silver carries a different mark: Chaffers’s 1922 list of assay office marks gives Sheffield’s as a crown. Sheffield Assay Office’s own history explains both. The 1773 Act that set up the office gave it a crown as its town mark; after 1904, when Sheffield was allowed to assay gold as well as silver, it used the crown for silver and the rose for gold; and after the Hallmarking Act of 1973, it gave up the crown and used the rose on both.

Also searched as: rose hallmark, Sheffield assay office mark.

A crown on older Sheffield silver

The crown Chaffers lists for Sheffield is easy to confuse with the crown that the Hallmarking Act uses as its picture mark for gold. On Sheffield silver made before the 1973 Act, a crown is the town mark; on gold, the crown is the picture mark for the metal, and before 1904 Sheffield did not mark gold at all.

Why a crown, then a rose?

Sheffield Assay Office tells the story that the Birmingham and Sheffield petitioners for the 1773 Act met at the Crown and Anchor, an inn off the Strand in London, and that each town took one of its signs. It adds that the inn certainly existed, but whether there is any truth in the story is unknown. Birmingham took the anchor. The office’s history says only that after 200 years Sheffield lost its crown mark for silver and used the rose on both gold and silver.

How the office began

Jackson dates the Sheffield assay office to 1773. Its own history says local silversmiths resented having to send their wares to London for hallmarking, and joined with the Birmingham petitioners despite fierce opposition from the London Goldsmiths’ Company. The Act named thirty local men, among them the 3rd Earl of Effingham, as Guardians of the Standard of Wrought Plate within the Town of Sheffield, and kept silversmiths among them to fewer than ten, so that the office was run for the consumer rather than the manufacturer. The office is at Guardians’ Hall in Sheffield.

Sheffield plate is not Sheffield silver

The word Sheffield on a piece does not mean the Sheffield assay office. The Silver Society writes that Sheffield plate was invented around 1743 by fusing a sheet of sterling silver to a core of copper, and that Sheffield plate and electroplated items carry no silver marks. The Sheffield office did keep a register of makers’ marks on plated wares for a time: after its second Act of 1784 it had the right to register makers’ marks on plated silver made within a hundred miles, a register that fell into disuse from 1836.

The Sheffield rose in the modern hallmark

Today the rose is the compulsory assay office mark in a Sheffield hallmark, struck with the sponsor’s mark and the fineness mark. The office’s history records other changes it saw: laser marking for hollow and delicate articles in 1997, and the January 1999 changes that made the date letter, the sterling lion and the crown optional. Platinum was first assayed at Sheffield in June 1975.

Special Sheffield marks

Birmingham Assay Office’s timeline records that for its bicentenary in 1973, Sheffield struck its 1773 date letter, E, again.

Light silver and the cost of the mark

Sheffield Assay Office’s history says the office struggled for its first eleven years. Sheffield makers used mass-production methods to stamp out thin, light wares that competed with heavier London goods, but assaying was charged by weight, so over 100 knife handles could be marked for five pennies. The Act of 1784 changed the charge for small articles to one by count, and the office’s fortunes revived. Originally it could mark silver made within twenty miles of Sheffield.