By Porter Lang
Check the base first. On silver, the marks are a legal record. On pewter they are something looser, and a good deal of British pewter carries none at all. The Pewter Society says so plainly: British and Irish pewter is often unmarked, and unmarked pieces are normally of good quality, so there is no reason to be suspicious of them.
What pewter is
Wikipedia gives the composition as mostly tin, between 85 and 99 per cent, with antimony and copper and sometimes bismuth or silver. Its example of a typical European casting alloy is 94 per cent tin, 1 per cent copper and 5 per cent antimony. The melting point it gives is about 170 to 230 degrees Celsius, depending on the mixture.
A trade with a very old guild
Wikipedia’s article on the Worshipful Company of Pewterers says the company has existed since at least 1348 and is one of the 111 livery companies of the City of London. Its hall, Pewterers’ Hall near London Wall, has been its base since 1961 and is its third. The first was destroyed in the Great Fire of London and the second was lost to fire in 1840. The article says pewter is still a thriving UK industry, though smaller than it once was, and that the company runs an annual three-day crafts exhibition and competition called Pewter Live.
Wikipedia’s article on pewter says the metal was used for household items in Roman Britain, came into extensive use across Europe from the Middle Ages, and lost ground to developments in pottery and glass in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It says lidless mugs and lidded tankards were common in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and that pewter returned to fashion in the late nineteenth century through a revival of medieval-style objects.
The five kinds of mark
The Pewter Society names five broad categories of mark on British and Irish pewter: touch marks, pseudo-hallmarks, quality marks, labels and numbers. A touch mark often carries the pewterer’s name or initials. The collectors’ club in the United States, the Pewter Collectors Club of America, calls a touch mark the pewterer’s trade mark and says it almost always includes the name or initials of the maker.
Pseudo-hallmarks, the American collectors’ page says, resemble silver hallmarks. They were used alongside larger touch marks or instead of them. The Pewter Society page names the category without describing the designs.
Quality marks are the odd ones. The American collectors’ page says a crowned rose signified quality in England from the mid-sixteenth century, and some makers used a crowned X to suggest quality. It says neither mark had regulatory standing or enforcement. So a crowned rose is a maker’s claim and not a test result.
Control, or the lack of it
The two sources describe the regulation of the trade differently. The Pewter Society says that, unlike silver and gold, pewterers’ marks were loosely controlled and so vary widely in form and meaning, and that there was no central register of pewterers or their marks. The American collectors’ page says guilds regulated pewter in London and Edinburgh. It does not describe how. We do not try to reconcile the two. Our reading: a guild could regulate who made pewter without a single register of every mark, but neither page says that, and we have not seen the guild’s records.
Maker or seller?
The Pewter Society warns that pewterers sometimes bought stock wholesale, so a mark may show the seller rather than the maker, and two pewterers’ marks can appear on one piece. It says that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries businesses such as ironmongers resold wholesale pewter under their own name. The American page warns that a “London” label may have been used to deceive buyers or to imply London quality, and that place-name labels usually show where a pewterer worked and not necessarily where the piece was made.
Wear, and what a mark cannot prove
Pewter is soft, says the Pewter Society, so marks wear away easily, and even a worn touch can sometimes be identified from other marks on the same piece. The American collectors’ page says marks cannot be relied on alone, and that experienced collectors judge by design, workmanship and the characteristics of the alloy as well. It adds that catalogue numbers, found mainly on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britannia metal wares, can be a clue. Its figures about unmarked pewter, a third never marked, refer to American pewter and not British, so we leave them aside.
The Pewter Society will identify marks for owners of a couple of pieces free of charge, but not for dealers or for sales-driven requests, and says its database is for members only. We have not used it.
Dates in order
- Roman Britain: household pewter, according to Wikipedia.
- 1348: the Pewterers’ company exists by this year at the latest, according to Wikipedia.
- Mid-sixteenth century: the crowned rose as a quality mark in England, according to the Pewter Collectors Club of America.
- Late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: tankards and mugs common, according to Wikipedia.
- 1840: the second Pewterers’ Hall lost to fire, according to Wikipedia.
- Late nineteenth century: the revival of medieval-style pewter, according to Wikipedia.
- 1961: the company’s present hall, according to Wikipedia.
Side by side
The two collectors’ bodies agree that marks help and that marks mislead. They differ on how much control there was over them, and the American body is writing mainly about American pewter. Our reading: for a British piece, the Pewter Society page is the closer guide, and the American page is useful for the general ideas about touch marks and quality marks.
What kind of sources these are
Two Wikipedia articles; the Pewter Society, a specialist society for the subject; and the Pewter Collectors Club of America, also a collectors’ body. Neither society is a regulator, and no maker’s own account is used.
Questions a buyer would ask
Is it marked, and where? What does the mark say: a maker, a retailer, a quality claim? Is it old or a modern casting? Was it made in Britain? A good seller can answer these in a sentence each. We name no maker, no retailer, and no pewter piece, and we give no prices.
What we left out
We left out the Asian alloy figures and the Wikipedia list of modern uses such as medals and figurines. We left out the company’s charitable grants and the origin of its arms, which involve religion, and the American mark details that do not apply to British pieces. We left out any advice on cleaning or polishing, because none of the pages we read gives it.
Quick answers
Is unmarked pewter a bad sign? According to the Pewter Society, no. It says British and Irish pewter is often unmarked and that unmarked pieces are normally of good quality.
What is a touch mark? The Pewter Collectors Club of America calls it the pewterer’s trade mark, almost always including the maker’s name or initials.
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Roam first. Shop later.