Markings editor
Cyrus Peake
Cyrus Peake apprenticed under a Sheffield silver assayer in the 1990s. He edits the magazine's Markings section.
Beats
Published in The Pewter
The Silver Spoon Stamped Three Times
A George III silver dessert spoon with three sets of marks — Edinburgh assay, maker, and a tiny owner's mark added later — traced from a 1791 Edinburgh silversmith to a Glasgow merchant family and finally to a Glasgow charity shop.
The Jeweller's Loupe and the Restorer's Eye
A ten-times loupe and forty years of looking through one: a Sheffield silversmith on the small lens that has shaped his trade.
A Silversmith Restorer in Sheffield Attercliffe
Oonagh Tindall works on Victorian and Edwardian silver from a small workshop in a former cutlery factory. On a Friday in May she repairs a damaged Walker and Hall tea service.
Bermondsey Square on a Friday Morning
Five a.m. in south London, where the oldest open-air antiques market in the city still trades by torchlight and a particular legal history hangs over the stalls.
Victorian Electroplate Marks: What the EPNS Stamp Really Tells You
An Edwardian tea pot from a Bristol estate sale, picked up for twenty-two pounds in February, carried the impressed letters EPNS beneath the maker's mark of James Dixon & Sons. The four letters do not denote silver, and yet the piece is worth more than its weight in silver would suggest.
A 1912 Singer Treadle Sewing Machine, Returned to Stitch
A black-japanned Singer Model 27, in its original quarter-sawn oak cabinet, came in with a frozen handwheel and a stripped belt. The work of bringing it back, mostly with parts still in production.
A Georgian Tea Caddy with a London Customs Stamp
A 1786 mahogany tea caddy, found in a Kent estate sale, identified by a small customs stamp inside the lid and traced to the household of a London linen-draper who recorded its purchase in his daybook.
A Brass Wire Brush for Delicate Metal: The Quietest Tool on the Bench
On a workbench in Sheffield, a brass-bristled brush the size of a toothbrush sits beside a cup of cold tea. It costs three pounds and does work no other tool can do.
The Receipt in the Sheraton Drawer
A small folded paper, found in the back of a side-table drawer in a Newport auction lot, attributes a Federal side chair to the Salem cabinetmaker Elijah Sanderson, settles a decade-old debate, and slightly lowers the chair's price.
English Pewter Touch Marks of the Eighteenth Century
The London Pewterers' Company kept a touchplate at Pewterers' Hall on Lime Street from 1668 until the Hall was destroyed in the Blitz in 1940. The touchplate was a flat sheet of pewter on which each newly admitted master struck his personal mark.
Sheffield Silver Hallmarks: The Year Letters, Read Patiently
A page from the Sheffield Assay Office's 1899 ledger sits open on Cyrus Peake's bench, and the small Gothic capital P stamped beside the crown explains, by itself, why a tea caddy turned up in a Stockport house clearance last March.