Gorham Manufacturing Company Marks: How to Identify and Date Them

Marked with three symbols in individual rectangular punches: a lion (facing right), an anchor, and the letter G, usually followed by the word STERLING.

The Rhode Island Historical Society (RIHS) official website confirms it holds Gorham product catalogs from the last quarter of the 19th century along with matching objects, stating: 'The RIHS has a small but lovely collection of Gorham Manufacturing Company catalogs from the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and a complementary collection of objects in the Museum.' (source: https://www.rihs.org/object-thursday-gorham-silver/). The RISD Museum is reportedly home to the company's largest object collection, but risdmuseum.org returned an access-denied error (403) this time and could not be verified. The claim that the lion-anchor-G mark can be dated to a specific year via a 1868-1933 symbol/letter system was only found on specialist reference sites such as 925-1000.com, which refused all crawling this time (403), and the rules require such sites not to be used as a sole source, so this was not adopted as a publishable fact.

Turn the piece over and light the mark from a low angle with a lamp or phone torch, which throws the impressed or engraved lines into relief; a printed or painted mark wants soft, even light instead. Fill the frame with the mark, then take a second shot of the whole piece. Do not clean tarnish off silver before photographing; the mark reads better dark. The app matches the mark and shape to the notes above.