Gorham is considered as one of the best silverware manufacturing companies in the world. 183 1 was founded by Jabez Gorham of Rhode Island. At first, it started with a simple silver spoon, but the development speed was amazing. In just seven years, it has become a large-scale silverware production enterprise with more than 450 people.

Unlike Tiffany, Jabez Gorham was born as a professional silversmith and studied under Nehemiah Dodge, the main founder of Rhode Island Jewelry Manufacturing Company. And many people may not know that Gorham is actually a supplier of Tiffany's full range of silverware, and many Tiffany silverware are actually from Gorham.

From the second half of19th century to the beginning of 20th century, Gorham attracted many of the best designers and silversmiths in the world. Among them, William J. Codman, as one of Gorham's most important designers, designed the famous Martele series with 950 sterling silver, and defeated Tiffany at the 1900 Paris World Expo.

The picture below shows a large silver dinner plate designed by William J. Codman1893. The cost is extremely high. It takes 125 hours to shape and 620 hours to decorate the periphery of the dinner plate. The manufacturing cost of the factory is about 1200 dollars, and the price of the retailer is as high as more than 2,000 dollars. You know, a few years later, the first cars in the world will cost several hundred dollars.

No flowers for a hundred days. During the Great Depression of 1930s, the demand for silverware was greatly reduced. Although I tried many methods, I still failed to escape the bad luck of selling the company. 1967, the family business that has been in operation for more than 100 years officially changed hands, and the decline of Gorham began. The new manager intends to regain market share at a lower price, so he lowered the production standard of silverware, but this strategy seems to have failed. In fact, this is also obvious. A luxury brand might as well make daily necessities directly to reduce the price and quality of its products.

Subsequently, Gorham changed hands several times, and was owned by Luno Group in 2005. Now it sells stainless steel tableware. The price of a single piece of tableware is around tens of yuan.

Brand imprint

Gorham's sterling silver imprint is relatively simple and easy to identify. Brand imprint consists of lion, anchor and capital letter G, but it is slightly different in different years.

date stamp

Gorham officially launched the 925 sterling silver standard on 1868. Since then, a different mark has been changed every year on high-grade silverware to represent the year. Generally, these year numbers will only appear on sterling silver or silver-plated utensils, and there will be no year numbers on tableware.

I found the above picture on the internet, but it is still difficult to compare it with the real thing. So I spent a long time collecting physical photos of the date stamp every year. Really tired, so please don't just collect, remember to give me a compliment.

1868- 1884 capital letters A-Q

1885- 1933? Change different patterns every year.

1934- 1940 discontinued annual ticket

After 194 1-80? A combination of geometric figures and numbers

The time stamp after forty is easy to identify. If you change a geometric figure every ten years, then the first year of every ten years is a separate figure, and the number 1-9 is added to the figure of the next nine years.

The 1940s

The 1950s

After that, the year mark is the same as above, but the geometry has changed.

There are also some special signs of pure silver and silver plating, which will be updated in the future.