A comprehensive guide to
American sterling silver and
silver plate flatware.
We are actively seeking vintage silver flatware catalogs. If you have an old catalog to sell or share, please let us know.
Can’t find your silver mark on the silversmiths pages? Try the Retailers section.
In the past, it was common for retailers, merchants, importers, and others to put their own business’s mark on silver and other fancy goods. Oftentimes a piece of silver will bear both a maker’s and a retailer’s mark. Sometimes though, all one has available for reference are these other marks.
Of course there were thousands of individuals and businesses that were neither silversmiths nor silver
manufacturers that marked the silver they sold, and some businesses continue to do so today. Pictured here is
a small sampling of them.
The making of souvenir spoons started in Europe in the mid-1850s.
M.W. Galt and Seth F. Low (son of Daniel Low) are credited with
bringing this idea to the U.S., launching a collecting craze that lasted
for 30 years and continues to be popular today.
M.W. Galt Bro. & Co. made the first souvenir spoon in the United
States in 1889. It was the George Washington spoon and it was shortly
followed by the Martha Washington spoon.
But it was the Daniel Low Co. that really got the souvenir spoon industry rolling in 1890.
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