The upper mark (Plaqué) is on a Tureen about 1816.

The lower mark (Doublé) is on the Coffee Pot illustrated (p. [211]).

A great number of marks appear on close plated articles. Horday & Co., S.G., E.S., S.J. and others. But their identity is not known. Nor is it very significant. An interesting mark, Sly. Dublin, is found on a skewer in the early period.

Probably seventy-five per cent. of examples of old Sheffield plate are unmarked, though they exhibit fine craftsmanship which any maker might well have been proud to have stamped with his initials had the Act of 1773 been framed sufficiently clear to enable makers to venture stamping plated ware at all with safety. Anonymous, therefore, as most of the best Sheffield plate of the best period is, it bears on the face of it the hall mark of exquisite workmanship.

Collectors of old Sheffield plate make a great mistake in constantly demanding that examples be marked. If this demand for marks on old Sheffield plate be insisted upon, the marks will accordingly be supplied. There is nothing to prevent stamps being made to represent some of the marks found on old Sheffield plate, and unmarked pieces will soon bear marks and straightway become more saleable. The public by incessant clamour drive those responsible for providing for its wants into devious paths. The dealer in old Sheffield plate has scores of fine unmarked examples and he is wishful to sell them as such.

They are undoubtedly old and of fine quality. It should be the ideal of the collector to know the technique of his subject so well that the artistic beauty and the skilful craftsmanship of an example should make its appeal to his trained scrutiny irrespective as to whether there is any maker's mark on the piece or not. The seams on old pieces showing joins are a far better test of old workmanship as between old Sheffield plating and modern electro-plating. These seams are the hall marks of the makers a century and a century and a half ago.

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