Page 63 - Chinese SIlver By Adrien Von Ferscht

UNDERSTANDING CHINESE EXPORT SILVER MAKERS’ MARKS

Chinese Export Silver makers’ marks are not easy to understand, especially for a
Westerner. This doesn’t particularly have anything to do with the fact that many marks may
partially contain Chinese characters, some of them totally. Silver marks in the West are
designed to impart accurate and relevant information even though some Western
countries did not have a registered or regulated assay system per se. In China, there was
no regulated system of any kind when it came to marks; they were all the product of the
maker’s whim on how they looked. The information it gave, with the exception of a few
regional areas of China where it was necessary to declare the purity of the silver, was
minimal.

To even begin to understand a system of marking that is alien to anything in the West, one
has to forget completely any prevailing norms and standards we may be used to and to
understand that the “system” is actually not a system at all; it is haphazard at best and
some of it the product of pure fiction! Bizarre as it may sound, as a skilled artisan, it is also
necessary to understand where a silversmith stood on the Chinese social ladder for us to
understand the logic behind the marks [and I use the word ‘logic’ loosely].

THE ACTUAL MARKS

Firstly, the marks found on items of Chinese Export Silver are not “hallmarks”. A hallmark
is a series of compulsory marks either punched onto silver or laser-implanted that convey
precise information. These marks also apply to gold, platinum and palladium. The word
“hallmark” refers to the British Assay Office which is administered by The Goldsmiths’
Company and has been since the 1300s. The “hall” refers to Goldsmiths’ Hall and this is
where the central Assay Office is situated, because by 1478 there were several hundred
gold and silver workshops and merchants manufacturing silver items in the area around
Goldsmiths’ Hall known as the City of London. As it was not possible for the warden to visit
them all, the merchants were ordered to bring their items to the Hall for testing, recording
and marking; this is the origin of the term “hallmark” - struck with the sovereign’s mark at
Goldsmiths’ Hall. It still remains essentially a basis of the same system.

The marks we find on Chinese Export Silver can at best be described as “silver marks”,
but given that no assay system ever existed in China; no equivalent system of silver
regulation existed in China; the only thing that is probably consistent about Chinese
silver marks is the inconsistency!