Page 70 - Chinese SIlver By Adrien Von Ferscht

skills sought after by the retail silversmith commissioning a specific piece. Some
workshops worked as a family unit while other Chinese silversmiths employed more of a
production line method with each expert carrying out an essential element until a master
artisan silversmith [the man behind the Chinese chop mark] finished it. It is not unusual to
see the same artisan chop mark used in conjunction with several retail silversmith’s marks.
The same chop mark can appear in conjunction with several different main makers’ marks.

When deciphering a silver mark or chop mark in Chinese, one must always consider that a
Chinese ideogram is essentially a tonal symbol, making transliteration of a chop mark only
an approximation of what it might look and sound like in English.

To complicate matters further, we are somewhat plagued by historic
interpretations of names - interpretations that have, over the course
of time, been adopted as the given name. Chinese is not an easy
language to transliterate into English, especially since the sound of
a name in Mandarin is almost certainly to be different in Cantonese.
The mark illustrated on the left could be transliterated as either De
Xing Lou using the Mandarin dialect or Tak Hing Lau using
Cantonese. If a mark originated from Canton or even Hong Kong,
the default dialect would be Cantonese. It is mainly for this reason
one is often presented with at least two options of name;
sometimes, however, there could be names that have become the
norm through lantern usage that are not accurate transliteration -
the previously mentioned Powing/Bao Ying being a good example.

Given many Chinese artisan silversmiths were itinerant and, using Osmond Tiffany’s
journal observations of the mid-19th century, this gives us an insight into a world where
there was a network of thousands of silversmiths working for a hardcore of main retail
silversmiths. Since almost all of the names we see written in English are fictitious, there is
a school of thought that believes that behind some of the main retail silversmiths’ names
lies a complex arrangement of foreign and Chinese merchants and agents who, acting as
a de facto cartel, were able to monopolise significant segments of the China Trade. While
there is no firm evidence of who was behind the retail silversmith Cutshing, for instance,
was one of the most notable retailers of export goods of that time and had been since the
late 18th century. My research indicates there was likely to have been one such cartel that
operated behind the guise of the Cutshing name.

DATE IDENTIFICATION

In the absence of a regulated assay system or even an official register of silversmiths or
retail silversmiths, dating objects can only be a subjective opinion based on the evaluation
of the style of an item in relation to the maker and other pieces we know that particular
maker produced. It is reasonably easy to place an item of Chinese Export Silver within one
of the 4 manufacturing periods. The form the maker’s mark takes may also help. Quite a
few of the makers have a fairly long track record of manufacturing years and their own