Heres an update on my mini seriese on hallmarking which covers how to read the hallmarks that you can find on silver, gold and platinum jewellery. These are important to all collectors of antique and vintage jewellery as they help us to identify, date and value a piece.

- What are the different hallmark symbols?

- British hallmarks from the Victorian era through to the 1970s

- Current British hallmarks

- European hallmarks

- Useful books and websites

OK – Part one of my mini series on reading gold and silver hallmarks. Before we learn how to read them I though it would be useful to look at what useful information they tell us.

As far as I am concerned it is wonderful to find a piece of antique or vintage jewellery with a full set of British hallmarks. From a full set of British hallmarks on vintage and antique jewellery you can tell:

- what metal the jewellery is made of ( gold, silver or platinum)

- what the quality of that metal is ( 9 carat or 22 carat gold?)

- the date the piece was hallmarked ( 1870 or 1970?)

- the town it was hallmarked in

- the sponsors mark of the company who had the piece hallmarked ( often the maker or artist but could be a retailer)

So from these tiny marks we can gain really accurate and guaranteed information. No wonder antique British jewellery is so popular to collect.More recently (since 1999) the British hallmarking system has changed and we can often get less information but that will affect vintage collectors of the future rather than those of today. At least we can tell that the piece is after 1999. Each European country has a different set of marks some useful, others very difficult. I will cover other European countries later on.

Before we go any further arm yourself with a loup ( a jewellers 10x magnifying glass) and carefully clean out the dirt from the hallmarks on the metal. They are often so clogged up you cant read them. Unless you are certain that all the gems set into your jewellery are safe to clean do take care and seek specialist advice before carrying out this step. I also find that pen and paper is handy – copy out the hallmarks the letters and shapes. This means that you can use the hallmark tables without needing to keep examining the piece.

You are going to find a huge variety of marks and also many of your pieces of jewellery will not have any hallmarks – I will cover how to identify jewellery without hallmarks at a later date

Since my previous post on vintage jewellery hallmarks I have received a couple of queries about loupes – where to get one, which one to choose and how to use one.

There are good loupes and bad ones, as with most things in life you pay a little more for quality. If you are going to be examining lots of hallmarks its best to go for a slightly better one. Above are two loupes both have the same 10 x magnification – the tatty black one is the one I use every day, the shiny silver one I would only use in an emergency – it hurts my eyes to spend much time using that. The larger loupe has a lens about 20mm diameter. The smaller one is about 14mm.
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