Silver Marks on Fork

Q: I have a silver fork with these marks, but I don’t know how to find out what they mean. Can you help?

A: This mark on your silver plated fork was used by Levesley Brothers. The company was founded by Charles, Thomas, and William Levesley in Sheffield, England, about 1863. William Lloyd joined the firm in 1883 and the name was changed to Levesley Brothers & Lloyd. Lloyd retired in 1893 and the company was called Levesley Brothers again. The company was also registered at the London assay office in 1893. It went bankrupt in 1929. Some sources list it continuing in business in Sheffield until 1935.

Victorian English Silver Plate

Silver plate made in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was made by fusing a thin layer of silver onto a sheet of copper. By the Victorian era, the last half of the 19th century, silver was plated differently—it was electroplated. A method of electroplating metal was discovered by Luigi Brugnatelli, an Italian chemist, […]