Getting close to the end of my  mini series of articles on hallmarking on antique and vintage jewellery. This piece covers European hallmarks . Hint – if you have a ring do check the outside of the back of the shank for hallmarks, just occasionally you will find European hallmarks here.

European Hallmarks

This is a very complex area and here is just a brief introduction. Throughout Europe each country has developed its own standards for marking precious metals and they also have recognised different standards for example 800 silver has been widely used in Europe but only legal in the UK since 1974. Up until 1999 the UK did not accept any of the hallmarks issues by any foreign country and items imported into the UK had to be re-hallmarked ( see below).  We do find however plenty of vintage jewellery made of both silver and gold with European hallmarks and no UK hallmarks.  Whilst care needs to be taken how we describe them when it comes to selling them it can be fun to discover what the hallmarks meant in their country of origin. I am not going into these in detail but will provide links to websites which ave listed European hallmarks in the next part of my guide.

Countries which subscribe to the hallmarking convention which allows them to currently import jewellery to the UK without further need for hallmarking are listed in my previous post on hallmarking

European silver

Collectors of vintage jewellery should be aware that whilst some countries made jewellery from sterling silver (.925) others used 800 grade silver which could not legally be called silver in the UK until the 1970s.

Jewellery Imports

Jewellery which is imported into the UK for sale and which is not covered by convention system needs to be hallmarked. This jewellery has the same hallmarks as UK jewellery with a couple of differences – the town marks are different, the fineness reads differently but they are still the same decimals and from 1867 the letter F was stamped in addition to the UK hallmarks. The most important thing is to learn to identify the town marks  ( links to these in the next post)