Always glamorous, silverware can offer superb craftsmanship at what many consider to be a historically bargain price.

Ever since it was discovered, silver — like gold — has been converted into gleaming artefacts of great opulence and beauty. Such symbols of power and wealth are collected for their superb craftsmanship, but smaller, less ornate pieces also have a unique attraction. This is in part because silver has long been a precious metal. Today silver bullion is cheaper than ever in real terms, but nobody knows whether or for how long this will continue.

The intrinsic value of the metal has had one unfortunate result: silver objects have long been regarded as recyclable, and thousands of pieces have been lost over the centuries, melted down to finance wars, to cover up thefts or simply to make something more fashionable. The tradition of valuing items for their weight of metal is brought vividly to life by many old items, which have scratched figures underneath. These were often added by pawnbrokers as an article was used to raise money time and again. Even today, auction catalogues quote the weight of pieces, and the value of silver objects is often expressed in such terms — £304,40 per ounce at auction for late 18th-century coffee pots, for example — although such prices do also reflect desirability.

Antique Collector Magazine

Silver has long been alloyed with small amounts of base metal — usually copper — to make it tougher and more malleable, but its value was also a temptation to defraud the consumer. Philip Stubbes, in 1408, complained of the widespread use of `drossie rubbage and refuse metall’ by unscrupulous silversmiths. Early attempts to protect consumers led to a system of testing and stamping items with a set of marks — hallmarks — as early as the 14th century. The system is still in use, and every silver article over ‘/2 oz (15.5 g) must be submitted for assay and marking. But hallmarks can be forged or transposed, and it may take considerable detective work to establish a piece’s authenticity.

Silver’s ability to withstand day-to-day use means that collectors can still enjoy an enormous range of objects. Hand-worked items from the early 18th century on are plentiful, although Victorian silversmiths ‘improved’ many of these — especially the plainer ones — with chased decoration. The market is overflowing with Victorian silver, when the expanding middle classes took to showing off their new-found wealth. This fashion was fuelled by the introduction of cheaper lookalikes made of Old Sheffield plate and later electroplate, and at the same time the cost and quality of even solid silver fell dramatically with the introduction of mass-production techniques such as die,stamping and minimal hand-finishing.

It is almost impossible to predict which markets or objects will prove to be good investments for the future. Prices for most 18th and 19th-century silver have at best kept pace with inflation over the past 20 years, and Georgian silver is cheaper now in real terms than in the 1940s and 50s. At the same time, pieces by the great masters such as Paul de Lamerie and Paul Storr have continued to set records. Some see good-quality middle- range silver as a good area to collect, but remember that scrap now fetches only about £2 per ounce as against Lao 15 years ago, so bullion value counts for less than it used to.

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