Goodday friends! Me again. Please could you be so kind as to help me out here.
This is a fork in the King’s pattern, that seems to have lost its glory. It’s glaringly yellow in colour, so I think it has been strenuously cleaned and there’s no silver left. Which means (if I am correct) that these marks indicate a plated item.
This is the best image I can get of the marks. Please do you recognise any of this?
Regards
Jan
Well, one quick answer to part of it: that last mark, on its side, says “EP,” so yup, it’s electroplated.
… and “A1” tells us that it is (or was) the company’s best quality plating.
Pictorial marks are always difficult to research; with letters an alphabetical search is feasible. The crown shows that it must date from before the mid-1890s when the use of crowns on electroplate was banned.
Jeff and Phil, thank you. I had thought that what Phil describes as “A1” was the maker’s mark, consisting of a first letter which is unreadable due to the punch being executed unevenly, followed by a “&” and an “I”. If I was wrong in this, would then the 8-pointed star with the tiny oval in the centre perhaps be a maker’s mark?
Regards
Jan
The 3 symbols in the middle, taken together, are the manufacturer’s identifier. The silvercollection.it site makes an attempt to list symbolic marks descriptively as, for example, “cross over a full moon ‘figural’”, but there are no “crown” marks listed.
Finding those pictorial maker’s marks online is mostly a matter of luck. I know I’ve seen that triple mark somewhere before - crown (common as dirt), eight-pointed star (unusual), and that third symbol (not sure how I’d describe it). But I can’t remember where, when, or what it meant. 
Jeff, isn’t that third symbol a fleur-de-lis?
Regards
Jan
No, a fleur-de-lis isn’t symmetrical in both axes like that.
Just looking at these now; the mark next to the “WP” seems to be another of those I took to be a Fleur-de-lys, but which isn’t. But it looks much like the one my fork. The crown, too.
Friends, your replies have stimulated me to such an extent that I have made up a small collection of EP symbols. I admit I have not yet found the exact combination of symbols that appear on my fork, so as to identify the maker. I attach a pic of my collection here for your information, although I believe you don’t really need my help. But I love to share. You’ll see variations of the real fleur-de-lys, as well as the crown, the 8-pointed star, and the funny symbol that looks for all the world like a crab. At least to me it does.
Regards
Jan
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