Hallmarking

This is the very first item that I sent off to The London Assay Office to be hallmarked with my unique maker’s mark. It is a ring that I made for myself. I was so excited and proud to see my initials on a ring I’d made. It still makes me very happy to see it!

I am registered with the London Assay Office. I picked it mainly because their logo is the Leopard and I love cats!

I don’t live near enough to any of the Assay offices to be able to pick up and drop off my items, I have to post them so it wouldn’t have made any difference where I registered.

The Goldsmiths’ Hall, London Assay Office, became a permanent assay office from 1478 when most of the main elements of hallmarking were put into place: the leopard’s head, the maker’s mark, and the date letter. It is probably from it being The Goldsmiths’ Hall, that the term ‘hallmark’ originated.

In 1773, the growth of manufacturing and the use of machines for silver production in Birmingham and Sheffield made it necessary to have new assay offices in these cities too. There is also an Assay Office in Edinburgh.

It is a legal requirement to hallmark all items made of gold, silver, platinum or palladium (subject to certain exemptions) if they are to be described and marketed as such.

This is because gold, silver, platinum and palladium are rarely used in their purest form – they are normally alloyed with lesser metals to achieve a desired strength, durability and colour, it’s not possible to detect by sight or touch the gold, silver, platinum or palladium content of an item so the item is tested before it is hallmarked.

The Hallmark guarantees the quality of the item you are purchasing. The only exception to the legal requirement for hallmarking is if your item weighs less than the following weights:

  • Platinum 0.5 grams
  • Gold 1.0 gram
  • Palladium 1.0 gram
  • Silver 7.78 grams

A lot of my jewellery weighs less than the required silver 7.78 grams and so doesn’t need to be hallmarked but some, like bangles and some of my pebbles collection items do, this can add a couple of weeks to your order time frame, depending on how busy the Assay Office is, Christmas is always busy!

If you are interested in the full history of hallmarking and how and why it has become a legal requirement, you can click here for a more in depth explanation.