Page 32 - Chinese SIlver By Adrien Von Ferscht

The ‘Fatman’ silver dollar

However, it is already a well-established fact that silver marks that appear on Chinese
silver from the late 18th century until the early 1940s convey little useful information.
Equally well-established is the fact that no regulatory system existed for silver items
manufactured in China during this period and there was no legal obligation to mark silver.
There is no conformity to Chinese silver marks and some, in particular the neo-classical
pieces made in the late 18th century to around 1840, bore marks that were often more
whimsical and to the detriment of being useful sources of information. This does not
necessarily mean, however, that silver items of the Chinese Export Silver manufacturing
era were inferior in either silver purity or workmanship - in most cases they weren’t and in
many cases they were superior to Western counterparts.

While extensive forensic research has been carried out on Western silver, relatively little
has has been undertaken with a specific focus on Chinese Export Silver. In 1993, however,
an investigative analysis project was undertaken by Janice Carlson at Winterthur
Museum’s Scientific Research and Analysis Laboratory in Delaware, USA that did just this.
The fact it had little impact at the time and has sadly languished in an archive until quite
recently may probably be due to the fact few people were actually aware of the existence
of Chinese Export Silver in the early 1990s.

Janice Carlson employed X-ray Fluorescent Spectrometry [XRF Analysis], an analytical
non-destructive technique that uses the interaction of x-rays with a material to determine
its elemental composition and is widely used today in museums, archeology and precious
metal assay offices.

The analytical exercise was performed on 48 carefully chosen hollow-ware objects that
were unquestionably attributable to the Chinese Export Silver manufacturing period. While
the XRF investigation were faultlessly carried out, the point of reference with regards to
period, age and what was then believed to be the ‘makers’ was the body of work of Crosby
Forbes et al, 1975. This is where the science goes slightly awry since the Crosby Forbes
work only acknowledged silver that was present in the USA and in most cases what were
taken to be ‘makers’ were in fact retail silversmiths. The three manufacturing periods set
out by the Crosby Forbes work were created out of first-hand knowledge of the interaction
of the Massachusetts Bay merchants in the China Trade, Crosby Forbes being a
descendant of one of the merchant families. The project also adopted Crosby Forbes’
belief that the majority of Chinese Export Silver made between 1840 and 1885 went to the