Nickel silver (German silver)

How to read it

Britannica describes nickel silver as a range of alloys of copper, nickel and zinc that are silvery in appearance but contain no silver. Its nickel content runs from 7 to 30 percent; the commonest is 18 percent nickel silver, with 62 percent copper and 20 percent zinc. The colour runs from nearly white at 30 percent nickel to a pale brassy yellow at low nickel. It has gone by several names. Britannica says it was called German silver until 1914; the V&A gives Argentine and Argentan as well; and the Neue Deutsche Biographie records that the chemist Ernst August Geitner called it Argentan while others called it Neusilber or Alpaka. The State Library of Victoria’s guide notes its other uses, in zippers, good keys, costume jewelry and musical instruments such as flutes and clarinets.

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Is German silver real silver?

No. Britannica says nickel silver contains no silver, and contrasts it with sterling silver, which is at least 92.5 percent pure silver. The State Library of Victoria’s guide says it has no elemental silver in it until plated. A piece of nickel silver that has been plated is EPNS; the silver is only on the surface. Solid silver at the sterling standard is described on the 925 sterling silver page.

Why German

The alloy copies a Chinese one. The V&A explains that paktong, from the Cantonese pronunciation of pai-t’ung, “white copper”, is a whitish alloy of copper, nickel and tin or zinc that Europe imported from China in the eighteenth century. Geitner, a chemist and manufacturer in Schneeberg, re-created it: according to the Neue Deutsche Biographie (1964) his method for refining pure nickel made factory production possible, and it was under way by 1823, the year a Prussian trade society offered a prize for such an alloy. He later had to defend his priority against Gebrüder Henninger of Berlin, who had first bought the alloy from him in 1824. The V&A agrees that it was developed in Europe in the 1820s, and has an English snuff box made of it in about 1836 to 1840. Britannica says it was not made in Europe by mixing the three metals until the 1840s.

Not every recipe is the same

Howard Okie, writing in 1928 about the base under English electroplate, described nickel silver as an alloy of nickel, copper and tin with a little zinc or antimony, a hard yellow metal whose formula varied. Britannica’s copper, nickel and zinc is the usual modern definition.

Under silver plate

Britannica says nickel silver was found well suited as a base for silver plating after an electroplating works was set up in Birmingham in 1844, and Britannica’s Sheffield plate entry says German silver often replaced copper under fused plate after 1830. Catalogues sold it by name: Mappin & Webb in 1881 listed forks in “best nickel silver” and dishes “electro-plated on nickel silver”. Some makers named their plated ranges as silver; the V&A has an electroplated nickel silver fork by James Deakin & Sons of Sheffield, of about 1890, sold as Brisbane Silver.